


Built to Fall Apart

by tridecaphilia



Category: The Maze Runner (2014), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Police, Alternate Universe - Sentinels & Guides, Alternate Universe - Sentinels and Guides Are Known, Artistic Liberties, Debt, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Serial Killers, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2015-05-24
Packaged: 2018-03-19 04:48:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 10
Words: 33,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3596925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tridecaphilia/pseuds/tridecaphilia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Minho doesn't want a Guide. Newt doesn't want a Sentinel. Fate has other ideas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. It all seems so simple.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Alex for convincing me this didn't urgently need burning. All mistakes are mine.
> 
> Update 3/23/2015: Minor edits made.
> 
> For those who may not know how Sentinel AUs work, there is a brief primer in the end notes.

It should never be so easy to find someone drinking alone. Any bar big enough for one lonely person should be big enough for dozens. But there he was, a lone blond figure tucked away at a table in the corner of the bar, nursing a glass of some hard liquor or other.

Minho didn’t hesitate. He’d come too far, done too much work to reach this point, to hesitate. He crossed the bar and sat down in front of the blond. “Newton?” he asked.

The blond’s eyes flicked up, then back down to his drink. “Newt,” he corrected. He took a sip of his drink before adding, “As in the slippery little bugger who let his Sentinel get killed.”

That statement hung in the air, and Minho had the feeling it was meant to make him leave. When he didn’t, Newt sighed.

“Look. I know what you are, you know what I am, and there’s only one reason someone like you goes looking for someone like me, and the answer’s no.”

Minho raised his eyebrows. “I haven’t asked the question yet.”

“Fine.” Newt waved a hand in a ‘go on’ gesture. “Ask.”

“I need you to--”

“No.”

Minho glared at him. “That’s not what I was going to ask.”

Newt sighed. “If I listen, will you go away?” he asked petulantly.

“Nothing would make me happier,” Minho assured him.

Newt motioned him on again.

This time Minho backed up. “I only manifested a few months ago.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Bullshit.”

Minho glowered until Newt relented. “I had all the gene markers,” he said, “but I never manifested. It happens.”

“True,” Newt said slowly, “but those people never manifest. They don’t wait until they’re in their twenties and suddenly develop their senses.” His eyes narrowed. “How many did you manifest, anyway?”

“All of them.”

Newt whistled. “And in your fairy tale,” he said, “what prompted your very delayed manifestation?”

“I’m a cop,” Minho said flatly. “A detective. A month ago I was in Vice, working undercover. I got busted. The op was bigger than we thought, a lot bigger, and then tortured me for three days. Total isolation.”

Newt sipped at his drink while Minho spoke, considering his words. Minho waited, nervous. This guy, useless as he claimed to be, was his only hope.

Total isolation--”vision quests”, to be more specific--were how Sentinels had triggered their manifestations in tribal days, before excessive tampering with food had led to early puberty and hormone-triggered manifestations. Before Sentinels had come out to the public and before the Sentinel-Guide Administration, the SGA, had been founded to pair superhuman Sentinels with their empathic Guides so that both parties could function normally, even above normally. Minho’s story was rare, but not totally unheard of.

Newt apparently agreed. “And?” he asked eventually.

Minho blinked. “And what?”

“What do you need from me?” Newt asked patiently.

“I’m a detective,” Minho said. “I want to stay a detective. I don’t want to be moved to the Sentinel unit.”

“So don’t,” Newt said with a shrug. “Lie. Keep your abilities a secret.”

“I’m trying. That’s where you come in.”

Once more the blonde made a ‘go on’ gesture. Minho wanted to punch him for it, wipe the smug grin off his face, but instead he kept going.

“Yesterday I zoned out at a crime scene. I’ve had spikes at my desk. So far they’re just being put down to PTSD but that’s bad enough. I’m on probation, if I don’t shape up soon I’m off. Permanently. Sentinel unit won’t even take me if I’ve got PTSD.”

“But you don’t have PTSD,” Newt said. “You have enhanced senses. All five of them, you said. "

Minho nodded.

Newt whistled lowly, shaking his head. “You don’t do things halfway, do you?”

Minho grimaced. “Believe me, I would’ve been a lot happier with just one or two. But no. I get all five.”

Newt raised his eyebrows appreciatively and leaned back in his seat. “So you’re at maximum risk of zone-outs and spikes and you’re running around with no control whatsoever? That’s a dangerous move, my friend. But I’m still not going to be your Guide.”

“I don’t want you to be.” This was the part that had given him so much trouble. “Not officially. Officially, you’re still licensed to practice therapy. _Officially_ , you’re going to be getting me past the panic attacks and dissociation I’ve been having.”

“And unofficially, what? We bond?” Newt said the word like it made his mouth curdle.

“No. No bonding.” Minho shook his head. “You help me with control. Off the books, under the table, no one knows what’s really going on. Three months is how long it takes to get certs, right? So in three months we part ways and never see each other again.”

“Three months,” Newt mused. “Three months is how long it takes in a controlled facility with multiple instructors.”

Minho leaned forward. “If I’m not better in three months I’m on a desk for the rest of my life. And I won’t accept that. So three months is our deadline.”

“Well, then.” Newt took another gulp of his drink. “My original answer stands. No.”

Minho grabbed his wrist. “I _need_ you,” he growled. “Don’t your Guide instincts have something to say about you saying no?”

Newt narrowed his eyes. Very lowly he said, “Get. Your hand. Off me.”

Minho withdrew before he thought about what he was doing. “Did you just--”

“I Guided you, yes.” Newt drummed his fingers on the table. “That’s what you’re asking for, isn’t it?”

“I’m asking for help,” Minho said. “I’ll pay you,” he added desperately. The guy had to have _some_ buttons, right?

Silence stretched between them as Newt finished off his drink and beckoned for another. Finally he leaned forward. For someone who’d had a full tumbler of hard liquor, he looked sharp-eyed and alert.

“Four hundred a week,” he said. “Paid Thursdays. Plus room and board. I don’t go in your head, you do _what_ I say _when_ I say, and at the end of three months, no matter what state you’re in, I leave. And should you terminate our agreement before the three months are up, I still get paid.”

Minho blinked. “Wow, you don’t ask much, do you?”

Newt smiled grimly. “If you had any other options you wouldn’t be talking to me.”

The guy had a point. Still. “What makes you think I’ve got four hundred a week to spend on you?”

“You _touched_ me,” Newt said patiently. “For a good three or four seconds. I know how much you make, I know your bloody shoe size. And I know the department will reimburse you for at least half my services.”

Damn Guides.

“Fine,” Minho said, leaning in again. “Here’s _my_ terms. You stay clean and sober for three months. No drinking, no smoking, no whatever else you do to fill that big gaping hole your dead Sentinel left in you.”

Newt’s expression darkened.

Minho wasn’t done. “You use anything, anything at all, and I’ll kick you to the curb and you won’t get shit.”

“One more thing,” Newt said. “You keep the bloody swearing to a minimum.” He extended a hand across the table. “I’ll be at yours tomorrow morning. Since you’re the one demanding I clean up, you get to help me through it.”

Minho hid his distaste and nodded. He shook the offered hand. “Deal.”

Newt smiled. “Deal.” Almost maliciously, he added, “Sentinel.”


	2. Twenty stitches in the hospital room.

Minho woke up before dawn to the sound of the buzzer to his apartment going off nonstop.

"Who is it?" he yelled over the pounding in his head.

No answer.

"Fucking super hearing," he grumbled. Of course no one could hear him. Even if the intercom button had been pressed, whoever was on the other side didn’t have his hearing. He’d have been a garbled mumble.

He crawled out of bed and staggered to the door, hands over his ears in a futile attempt to block out the noise. After what felt like an eternity he reached it and hit the intercom button. "Who is it?"

"It's Newt."

Minho rubbed his eyes, glancing blearily at the kitchen. Even from this angle he could make out the time. "It's five thirty in the morning!"

"It's tomorrow," was the level reply. "Now open up or I'll hit the buzzer again."

"Bastard," Minho grumbled, keeping his hand off the button this time. "Fine," he said into the mic, and hit the button to open the gate.

He stumbled to the kitchen and started coffee while he waited for the Guide to reach his apartment. He couldn’t deal with this without caffeine. Five-thirty was too early for this shit. Too early for _anything,_ for that matter.

Far too soon, there was a knock on the door, and Minho grudgingly opened it to find a tousle-haired blonde Guide on the other side. Newt had a massive backpack over his shoulders and a duffel in one hand. Minho couldn’t help staring.

“That’s it?” he asked.

“What’s what?” Newt asked. “You going to let me in or not?”

Minho stepped aside and the Guide pushed past him. “That’s all your stuff,” he repeated. “Where the hell have you been living?”

Newt glared at him. “Does it matter? Where am I staying in this dump?”

Minho looked around. He objected on principle to his home being called a dump, but then again, he wasn’t exactly the neatest person. “Study,” he said, rubbing his eyes as he led the way. “We’ll clear it out, get a bed in--I’ve got a cot set up in there now for when Thomas crashes here, but we’ll need to get you something better.” Honestly, by the terms of their agreement he could have just made Newt sleep on the cot, but something about that irked him. He blamed Sentinel instincts, but it wasn’t as easy to override as he’d have liked.

“Fine,” Newt said. He pushed past Minho again, dumping his bags on the floor.

“Hey,” Minho said. “You’re the one who decided to get here at the asscrack of dawn, not me.”

Newt glared at him. “I haven’t had a smoke or drink since last night. And before you ask about all the things that I shouldn’t tell a cop, you can do a bloody sniff test, I’m not using any of those either.”

Minho could connect the dots. “You’re in withdrawal.”

“No bloody shit.” Newt sat down on the cot heavily, scratching his arm. Minho had a feeling the gesture was only to cover up the shaking in his hands. “And,” Newt said pointedly, “you agreed to get me through it.”

“Right.” But now that he thought of it, Minho had no idea how he was supposed to do that. He’d been in Vice for a while, but not on any side of things that would tell him how to get someone through withdrawal.

Silence stretched out until Newt finally asked, “Is coffee on the list of banned substances as well?”

Minho considered, drawing in a breath that smelled of the bitter drink. The coffee maker was apparently done. He shook his head. “Nah, you can have some. Cream, sugar?”

Newt nodded, dragging himself to his feet with considerably more effort than he’d seemed to need to get his things into the room. “Enough sugar to give me a toothache and barely any cream.”

Minho nodded. “Good.” He pointed to the cot. “Sit, stay. I’ll bring it.”

He didn’t miss the fact that Newt lay down and covered his eyes as soon as he left the room.

He made the coffee slowly, buying himself time to figure out what to do. He was a lot less sure of this plan now than he’d been last night. Sure, last night the Guide might have had two drinks in the short time Minho was talking to him; but Minho had had those nights too. Seeing him in obvious withdrawal was a different ball game. He’d have to call his captain and tell him he’d be out for the next couple days. First, though, coffee. It’d help with the lethargy from nicotine withdrawal.

He came back into the room, taking the first gulp of his own coffee. Newt was sitting up again; Minho didn’t mention the fact that he hadn’t been before, just held out the other mug to him. The Guide took it with a murmur of thanks and downed half of it in one go.

Minho snorted. “Tired?” he asked.

Newt rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth. “Normally around this time I wake up from a nightmare,” he muttered. “Then I have a beer to get me back to sleep.”

God, he was a train wreck. And Minho couldn’t take it back now, not unless Newt used. That was the deal.

“Yeah, well you’re sober for three months,” Minho reminded him, though he couldn’t imagine the Guide needed the reminder. “So drink your coffee and go the--go back to sleep.”

Newt snorted. “Not sure those things go together,” he said wryly, but he took a gulp of coffee anyway. Minho left him there and headed to the kitchen, the farthest room from the study, to make a call.

It was a mark of how bad Minho had seemed lately that Nick didn't object to him taking the weekend off on such short notice.

"Just be well," he said, and Minho winced as he agreed and hung up. He wasn't the one who needed the admonition, but like hell was he telling his captain that. The less Nick knew about his arrangement, the better. Minho would have to tell him something eventually--Nick could safely know that he had a live-in “therapist” for three months to help him get over his “PTSD” as long as he didn’t know that that therapist was an addict and the PTSD was actually Sentinel senses.

Nicotine and alcohol withdrawal both peaked at forty-eight hours. It was going to be a long two days.

~

They were six hours and three cups of coffee into it, and Minho had cut Newt off when he almost bit his hand off for taking the cup. The Guide was more irritable than before, with the coffee taking the edge off his exhaustion. Minho had retreated to his own room to try to sleep, but he couldn’t, not with someone else across the hall. Or maybe it was just who it was. Sometimes Guides projected their emotions unconsciously.

No, Minho thought as he heard Newt turn over in the tiny cot for the fifth time in as many minutes. It would be reaching to think it was projecting. The Guide was just distracting him.

He rolled out of bed again and went to get more coffee. Maybe he’d watch a movie.

~

Movies were too loud. He tried more coffee, but it had suddenly turned unspeakably bitter on his tongue. He tried music, but that seemed louder than the movie had been. He tried reading, but even his yellowed old paperbacks reflected too much light. Eventually he ended up lying back on the couch, hands over his eyes, focusing without meaning to on the sounds the now-sleeping Guide made.

He was spiraling into a spike, he knew that. But he didn’t know how to stop. This was exactly why he’d gotten Newt to help him, but right now the guy was sleeping off nicotine and alcohol withdrawal. Useless to the world.

Downstairs, someone was talking on the phone. Minho started tracking them without meaning to, following their steps through their apartment, the rise in their heartbeat when the other person spoke. He zoomed in until he could hear the tone of the person on the far end of the line, focused until he could make out the words--

“Oi!”

Minho jerked. The word was like a thunderclap right by his ear and his eyes flew open to find a disgruntled blonde Guide standing over him.

“You’re s’posed to be asleep,” he mumbled without quite grasping what was happening.

“And you’re supposed to be staying out of trouble until I’m well enough to help you,” Newt snapped. “Zoning out isn’t staying out of trouble.”

Minho sat up, rubbing his ears tenderly. “Zoning out…” he repeated. “I was spiking.”

Newt’s voice was very dry. “Little-known fact: When a spike goes on long enough it usually leads to a zone-out. Why aren’t you sleeping?”

Minho squinted at him, trying to get his sight to turn down. Everything was too bright, despite the lights being off and the curtains drawn.

Newt sighed. “Look at me,” he said, and his voice fell into a pattern that told Minho this was a practiced litany. “Focus on my heartbeat. Hear how steady it is?”

Minho obeyed without really deciding to, and found Newt’s heartbeat louder in his ears than his voice.

“Focus on that. Make your own match.”

“How do I do that?” His voice was soft and a little slurred, like Newt’s words were a drug.

“Try.” There was a smile in Newt’s voice. “Just try.”

He obeyed, pulling his own heartbeat up in his ears and trying to match it to Newt’s. But it was useless. The heart was an involuntary muscle; he had no control over it. But he was focused so hard on trying that it took him a good five minutes to realize that the lights had dimmed to a manageable level, and he could no longer hear the voices downstairs.

He glared at Newt. “You tricked me.”

“You woke me up,” Newt shot back, and stretched his arms over his head as he yawned. "And since you're stable again, I'm going back to bed." He left at that, scratching his head with one hand and covering another yawn with the other. Minho watched him go.

He still had the limp.

~

Minho had been a waste of potential when it happened, but it had been all over the news. Sentinel Albert Styles had died in an accident while working on a job of unspecified nature. His bonded Guide, Zachary Newton, had survived but been crippled.

Minho had followed, almost idly, the story from there. Newton had been disgraced, released from his service as a Guide and his membership in the SGA revoked. It had been a shock. Styles and Newton had been the rising stars of the SGA until the incident. They'd been in high demand. And quite suddenly, they had been gone.

~

Two days was a long time when you were in withdrawal.

Despite Minho's insinuation the night they met, Newt didn't use anything illegal anymore. He hadn't since one experiment had sent him into an empathic spike so bad the SGA threatened to institutionalize him. Apparently his projecting had done some damage, and the SGA was more than happy to step in and stop him sullying their good name, even if they pretended he didn't exist the rest of the time.

Which was to say, the only things he had to recover from were nicotine and alcohol. But that was plenty. Thankfully the hallucinations only lasted a few hours.

Two days after he'd arrived, he woke up from yet another nap to the sense of someone new in the apartment.

He kept his eyes closed, focusing hard on his other senses. He was a first-class Guide; he could piece together conversations happening on the other side of a wall just by his sense of a person's mind.

The other person in the flat was a friend of Minho's. Newt had learned the sense of the Sentinel's presence in the past two days, even if he refused to go into it properly. He could guess who this was: Minho's partner, Detective Thomas Ellison. He could also tell what they were talking about. There was a case.

Minho hadn't mentioned he was a _homicide_ detective. But they were definitely discussing a murder; Vice didn't involve this level of grief.

He considered getting up, but he wasn't sure if Minho had told his partner about him yet. From the way Thomas was holding himself, he likely didn’t know there was a stranger in the apartment. Newt would have left it that way, but nature was calling.

He swung his legs off the cot and stood up, still focused so hard on the conversation in the other room he almost slipped into their minds before he caught himself. Minho had twitched; he knew Newt was awake and now had to figure out how to explain him.

Not Newt’s problem.

He opened the door and turned into the bathroom. It was at the end of the hall, right between the bedroom and the study. He made enough noise for Thomas to know he was there, but not so much that it was obvious. It was mostly so Minho would be sure to explain before he got out.

He relieved himself and washed his hands, still focused on Minho. From his sense of the Sentinel he could almost put the explanation into words.

_ He’s gonna be living with me getting me past the whole--incident. He’s here for three months and by then I’ll be back to normal. _

Thomas he didn’t know well enough to put words to, but he could read the skepticism in his mind and expected it translated to his voice as well.

He dried off his hands and finally left the bathroom, finally coming face-to-face with Minho’s partner.

Thomas was about Minho’s age, maybe a little younger. He had an open, curious face dotted liberally with moles, and brown hair that looked like he’d combed it that morning and then ruined it by pulling it in all directions out of stress. He was talking animatedly to Minho, but stopped when he saw Newt.

Newt smiled thinly. “‘Scuse me,” he muttered, pushing between them to get to the kitchen. He needed coffee.

“Since when does anyone sleep late in your apartment?” Thomas asked Minho.

Newt answered anyway, because he could tell Minho was nervous. “Since I bit his hand off when he tried to wake me earlier.” He grabbed the coffee and filters from the cupboard and added, “I was sleeping off a migraine.” Technically true, although he was leaving out that the migraine was the effect of nicotine withdrawal. God, he wanted a smoke. Or a drink. Or both.

He could sense the confusion in Thomas, and the curiosity, and the way Minho’s nerves were getting worse. For someone who planned to spend the rest of his life lying, Minho didn’t seem very comfortable with it. Newt focused very hard on making the coffee, giving the impression that he wasn’t concerned with the conversation.

“Captain know about him?” Thomas asked.

“I was planning to tell him tomorrow,” Minho said. “Which is when I’m supposed to be back to work.”

“I know, I know.” Newt knew without looking that Thomas was spreading his hands in a helpless gesture. “But he’s worried we’re looking at a possible serial.”

Newt couldn’t pretend disinterest anymore. He turned the coffee maker on and went to stand behind Minho, looking over his shoulder at the picture in his hands.

Minho’s concern had shifted with the words as well. “Do we have more bodies with this MO?” he asked.

Thomas shook his head. “But we could soon.” He tapped the photograph. “This look like a one-off to you?”

Newt examined the picture. It wasn’t the first dead body he’d ever seen, but it was certainly the most violent. The victim was a young woman whose chest was covered in blood. Her shirt was ripped in dozens of places by what looked like stabs. The picture wasn’t detailed enough to see how many there were, or how far they’d gone.

“The guy kept stabbing after she was _dead_ ,” Thomas said. “Some of those stab wounds didn’t bleed, you know that means they were postmortem.”

“Is the scene still intact?” Newt asked.

Minho turned to glare at him. Thomas looked surprised he’d spoken.

Newt turned an innocent face to Minho. “Sorry, did you want to ask?”

Minho shook his head. “The scene’s still intact,” he said, handing the pictures back to Thomas. “Otherwise it could wait until tomorrow.” He sighed. “There are other detectives,” he pointed out. Newt had the feeling it wasn’t the first time he’d said this. He wandered back into the kitchen and poured himself coffee while he listened.

“Captain wants us specifically,” Thomas said. “He said if it’s at all humanly possible he wants you to come in today.”

A month ago Minho had been Vice, he’d said. Newt suspected now that the job had been a joint one, or that Minho had been on loan. This, here, was what he was meant to do in the police department.

It took him a moment to realize that they’d stopped talking, and mostly he noticed that Minho was waiting for something.

He looked over. He was right, of course; the detective was watching him, hesitant and expectant all at once.

Of course. He couldn’t go to the crime scene without Newt.

Newt sighed, analyzing his current state. He’d been better, but he could function. “I need a shower and at least two cups of coffee,” he told Minho. “I’ll be ready in thirty minutes.”

Minho could keep his relief from his expression, but Newt could still read it. “I’ll fix you a travel mug,” he said. “We leave in twenty.”

Newt raised his mug in a mock salute and downed the whole thing in one go. He made a face, dropped the mug in the sink, and brushed past the detectives.

“You haven’t cleared him with Nick yet,” Thomas said.

“I cleared having two days off with him,” Minho retorted. “And he’s calling me back early, so he can deal with me bringing Newt.”

Newt rolled his eyes and turned on the shower.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point Don't has taken over my brain but it's almost finished so weekly updates on this should continue. If it all gets written ahead of schedule I'll switch to biweekly updates. Comments feed the muse.


	3. When the sun came up, I was looking at you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not gonna lie, this fic has gotten hard to write. It demands massive (for me) chapters, which means it takes longer to write each chapter, and will end up being much longer than anything else I've done for this fandom. It's also much more focused on the murder plot, for which I have to do a lot of BSing of police work, which is not how I most enjoy writing. Long story short, I'm working to keep up, but it is work, and every comment helps me keep going.

Thomas drove, at Minho's insistence, so he could look at the rest of the pictures on the road. He tried to ignore Newt looking over his shoulder. At least the blond wasn't talking.

"Is this someone's _lawn?"_  Minho asked in disbelief when he caught sight of a house number on the curb.

Thomas nodded grimly. "Reason number three the captain pulled you off holiday early."

Minho nodded, distracted but agreeing. "How'd no one see this?"

"Someone might've," Thomas said. "Problem is, the homeowners are on vacation and last night a bunch of kids had a party there."

"So no one's coming forward because they don't want to get busted for B&E or underage drinking," Minho murmured, flipping to the next picture in the stack.

It happened too fast to even react.

Thomas took a turn that made the tires squeal. A stray sunbeam turned the photograph as bright as a fluorescent light. And the next thing Minho knew, the car was stopped and his head was between his knees and there was a hand on the back of his neck and a voice in his ear.

~

Newt knew the moment it happened, even without the odd stillness that came over Minho. "Stop the car," he ordered, already unbuckling his seat belt.

"What?" Thomas asked, glancing over his shoulder.

Thank God for Academy training on how to deal with civilians. Newt's voice went hard. "Stop the car now!"

Thomas, as most people did, obeyed before his mind had really decided to do so. "What--?" he began, but Newt had already opened the car door and gotten out. He reached around, unlocked Minho's door, and opened it. Thomas, across the car, got out as well.

"What's going on?" he asked.

And thank God for Minho having told him the cover story. "He's dissociated. He told you he needed more time." Newt kept his voice hard, but his hands were gentle. He guided Minho's head down between his knees, taking the pictures from his unresisting hand and setting them on the dashboard.

It had been a long time since he'd had to do this, but he remembered. It was like riding a bike. He put his hand on the back of Minho's neck and let a calm he didn't feel seep into the Sentinel. He leaned in close, until his lips almost brushed Minho's ear, and started whispering.

"Listen to my voice. What you're seeing, what you're hearing, forget it. Forget the smells and touch, everything but me. Focus on my voice. Find my heartbeat and match it to yours. Find my heartbeat..."

He kept up the litany until he felt Minho's neck tense under his hand. "It happened again, didn't it?" the Sentinel whispered.

Newt nodded, helping him sit up. "You're okay now."

Minho sat back, rubbing a hand over his mouth. "How long?"

"Not long," Newt murmured. "A minute or two."

“Guys,” Thomas said. “I called the captain but he still wants us in there yesterday. Press is pushing for details and he wants to close the scene up.”

Newt looked at Minho. “You okay?” he asked softly.

Minho nodded, and Newt stood up. “Let’s go, then,” the Sentinel said to his partner. Newt hopped in the back, buckling himself in in the same movement. Time to see a dead body.

~

Minho staggered when he stepped out of the car. The smell of blood was thick in the air, coppery and sweet. He glanced around for the source before he remembered that the body was still a hundred feet away.

He hadn’t even gotten his balance back when a slim arm passed around his waist and settled there, hand squeezing his side lightly. “Smell?” Newt asked softly.

Minho looked down a bare inch into the Guide’s dark eyes. “Yeah,” he replied.

Newt nodded. “Thought so. Try to find the smell of the grass. Ignore the blood.” He tugged Minho, who followed along without entirely meaning to. He drew in a breath and found that he could find the scent of grass, could use it to block out the scent of the blood.

Newt had been one of the SGA’s rising stars before the incident. He kept forgetting.

Newt dropped his arm when a man in a suit turned to face them. How the Guide knew that the man in front of them was Minho’s captain, Minho didn’t know. Guides weren’t supposed to actually be telepathic. Maybe the blond just knew that this man was important; that was easy enough to tell, with the cut of his suit and the way he held himself. Although he was just five years older than Minho himself, Captain Teslow radiated authority.

“Detective Park,” he said. “Who’s this?”

Minho’s mouth went dry. Lying to Nick never worked.

Newt didn’t know that, apparently, because he held out his hand. “Captain,” he said. “I’m Zachary Newton--call me Newt. I’m helping Detective Park work through the trauma of his incident a month ago. I’ll be staying with him for three months.”

Nick shot Minho a look, but shook Newt’s hand. “Newt,” he said. “Interesting name there.”

“More interesting than Nicholas Teslow?” Newt asked with a grin.

Minho glanced at him. He definitely hadn’t told Newt the captain’s full name.

Nick, though, laughed. “Fair,” he said. “Well, you’ll fit right in around here. The man at the perimeter there is Officer Galilee. He goes by Gally because apparently his first name is even more embarrassing.” His eyes glittered with mischief.

Newt laughed right on cue, and Minho felt himself relaxing--a moment too soon, apparently.

“So, Detective,” Nick said. “Since when do you take my advice when it’s not an order?”

Minho blinked. Then he got it. “You mean getting help?” He shrugged. “I didn’t feel like riding a desk for the rest of my life,” he said. It was true; there was no lie to be found. “So are we going to catch a killer or just stand around talking?”

Nick nodded, stepped aside, and waved Minho on. Thomas, he saw, was already there, talking with Ben.

Minho pointed out each person as they passed them. “The girl with the sketchbook is Teresa. Her and Ben there--the guy by the body--are our CSU guys. You met Nick, you know Thomas, and Nick pointed out Gally. The other guy at the perimeter is Zart.”

That was about it. It was a small department for a small town.

Minho hesitated when they came in sight of the body, and once more he felt Newt’s hand on him, this time on his back between his shoulder blades. “You’re all right,” the Guide whispered, too low for anyone but Minho to pick up. “I’ll catch you if you fall.”

Minho snorted and sped up until Newt dropped his hand.

The body hadn’t been found right away; hedges around the property meant only the neighbors across the street could see it, and they’d slept in. Which meant the smell wasn’t only blood.

“I hate summer,” Minho muttered.

Thomas nodded grimly.

Summer meant decay was faster. Summer meant more scavengers hungry for flesh. Summer meant the smell was bad even to a normal nose, and Minho’s was anything but normal.

“Breathe,” Newt murmured at his shoulder. Minho thought the advice was a little backwards. Holding his breath seemed more sensible.

When he finally got close enough to make out features, Ben glanced up at him. “You okay, boss?” he asked. “You look a little green.”

“Bodies stink,” he shot back. “What do you got for us?”

The question was directed at Ben, but Teresa was the one to answer. “Unpopular opinion: I don’t think she was stabbed to death.”

Minho looked down at the body doubtfully. “She looks like she was.”

Ben sighed. “Teresa’s referring to this,” he said, turning the body’s head with gloved fingers. Minho raised his eyebrows; the entire back of the girl’s head was caved in.

“You think that killed her?” he asked.

Thomas interrupted, to Teresa’s obvious displeasure. The two had a sibling-like rivalry and had since Thomas moved from CSU to detective work. “She had to be alive when the stabbing started,” he said. “Too much blood for all of it to be postmortem.”

Minho took a pair of gloves Ben offered and crouched down, carefully moving the pieces of the girl’s shirt to get a better look at her wounds.

“She have any ID on her?” he asked. He took a careful breath and almost coughed from the smell. Yeah. Holding his breath was the new name of the game.

“Yeah, she did.” Ben picked up a clipboard beside him and scanned it. “Rachel Chen. 28 years old.”

“Sorry, did you say Chen?” Newt asked.

Ben looked up. “Yeah, why?”

Newt shrugged, but Minho was looking at him now too. “What?” he asked.

Another shrug. “I don’t know.”

~

Rachel Chen, under the deathly pallor, looked familiar. But damned if Newt could figure out where he knew her from. The static wasn’t helping, either.

Guides didn’t have spikes or zone-outs, but their empathic senses could fry just as easily if they weren’t careful. The recent murder was like white noise in his ears. He’d let himself get too dependent on alcohol and cigarettes to numb his brain. His control was slipping.

“I don’t know,” he told Minho hotly, because the Sentinel was still looking at him like he didn’t believe it for a second. “She looks familiar but I don’t bloody know where from.”

Minho shook his head, looking back at the victim. “Fine,” he said. “So who was she?”

“Still running that down,” Teresa said. “She doesn’t have anything in her wallet that’d tell us. It’ll be a few hours.”

“Well.” Thomas straightened from his crouch by the body. “I think we’re done here.” He looked at Minho.

Newt bit his tongue. If this were the old days, if the Sentinel in front of him were Alby, he could have talked him through using his senses. But this wasn’t Alby, and Minho didn’t want anyone to know about his senses.

“Yeah,” Minho said. “We’re done. Call us when Winston’s done with the exam.” He stood as well, turning to face Newt. “Lunch?” he said, looking between him and Thomas.

Ben snorted. “You can eat after this?”

“I can,” Newt said. “I threw up everything I ate yesterday.” It was true, and he knew Minho knew it. The Sentinel had dumped bleach in the toilet to make the smell go away. Withdrawal was a bitch.

Ben made a face. “TMI, dude. Go eat, we’ll have what you need ASAP.”

“Yeah, you better,” Minho said mock-threateningly. “I’m driving this time.”

“The hell you are,” Thomas said.

“Yeah, no, you’re not,” Newt said at the same time.

Minho glared at both of them.

Newt slowed as they approached the perimeter. Officer Galilee--Gally--was giving him an odd look. The big man turned and walked toward them and suddenly it hit Newt what was odd about him.

“Newton?” Gally asked.

“Newt,” he corrected softly.

“But your name--your real name. It’s Zachary Newton.”

Newt sighed, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Yes.”

Gally nodded, that odd look still on his face.

Newt pushed past him, and something seemed to shift in the big man.

“Sorry about your Sentinel.”

Newt looked over his shoulder. “Sorry about your senses.”

Gally flushed and didn’t answer.

“What was that about?” Thomas asked when Newt caught up to them at the car. Newt shook his head.

In the SGA, two-sense Sentinels were the lowest rung. One-sense Sentinels weren’t even registered, but two senses meant a bare minimum of training and then tossed out on the streets. Sentinel units in emergency crews and the military wouldn’t even take a Sentinel with fewer than three senses, and Guides were reserved for four- and five-sense Sentinels. By Newt’s estimate, Gally’s two were hearing and smell. Odds were good the man was treated more like a K-9 than a cop, even in a town too small to have a proper Sentinel unit. Newt couldn’t help feeling sorry for him, but at the same time he was wary. If Gally overheard something, he could expose Minho.

“So where are we going for lunch?” Thomas asked.

“I don’t care as long as it’s cheap,” Minho said.

“Wings?” Newt suggested.

Minho shrugged and Thomas nodded. “Wings it is.”

~

Minho really should have thought it through. There was no such thing as a wings joint that was not also a sports bar, and no such thing as a quiet sports bar. He grabbed Newt’s arm while Thomas went in to get them a table.

“You planned this, didn’t you?” he hissed. “How the hell do you expect me to do this?”

Newt rolled his eyes and pulled his arm away. “Relax,” he said. “I do know what I’m doing.” Without another word, he pushed past Minho into the restaurant. Minho, after a moment’s hesitation, followed.

The noise almost sent him staggering when he opened the door, and he froze for a minute. Then a voice caught his attention.

“Listen to me. Look at me. Follow me.”

Minho followed the voice with his eyes until he found Newt in the orange T-shirt he’d thrown on today. At the time Minho had thought it was just an obnoxious shade, but it was easy to focus on in the crowded bar, which made it a good beacon right now. He followed the shirt more than the person in it until he reached the booth where Newt and Thomas were sitting, Newt by the window on one side and Thomas by the aisle on the other. Minho sat down beside Newt, looking up at their waitress.

“Can I start you gentlemen off with something to drink?” she asked.

“Coke,” Thomas said. “Same for him,” he added, pointing to Minho. Newt ordered tea, and the waitress bustled off to get them their drinks.

“You okay, man?” Thomas asked. “You look like you’re in pain or something.”

Minho hadn’t realized he was being so obvious. “Headache,” he said. It was technically true, anyway; the noise of the restaurant was drilling into his skull.

“You can do this.”

Minho jerked in his seat, glaring at Newt. The Guide, though, had his chin propped in his hand and his head turned away, looking out the window. Thomas, as evidenced by the odd look on his face, hadn’t heard.

Newt kept talking, too softly for anyone but a Sentinel to hear. “Imagine a volume knob in your mind. Right now it’s turned all the way up. You can’t make anything out except my voice. Picture that volume knob until you can count the grooves on it.”

It sounded like hokum, but honestly, just then Minho would’ve sat in a hypnotist’s chair to make the noise go away. So he focused, trying to look like he was paying attention to Thomas while he did.

“See it? Now touch it. Put your hand on it. Focus until you can feel the knob in your fingers. Now turn it down.”

It was hard. The mental volume knob seemed to be stuck. But little by little, Minho started to turn it down.

Then the waitress returned, setting their drinks down with clunks that seemed far too loud. He flinched.

“Are you all ready to order?” she asked, taking out her pad and looking at them expectantly.

This time Newt answered, turning his face to her. “Actually we need a minute.”

She looked faintly disappointed as she left.

Newt switched hands when he looked out the window again, dropping his left hand into his lap. Minho returned to visualizing the volume knob. He jumped when, a moment later, a slim hand landed on his knee. He glanced at Newt, but the Guide didn’t seem to notice that he was touching Minho, so Minho sighed and went back to trying to grasp the knob so he could turn the volume down.

Thomas stood up. “You look like hell,” he said. “I’ve got Tylenol in the car, I’ll go get it.”

“Thanks,” Minho said distractedly.

As soon as his partner was gone, Newt turned in his seat to face Minho. His left hand moved from Minho’s knee to the back of his neck, his other hand replacing it on his knee. “Breathe,” he ordered.

Minho obeyed without meaning to.

Newt started rubbing small circles with his thumb as he spoke. “Hear my voice? Focus on it. Use it as the center. Make my voice the only thing you can hear.”

Minho wasn’t sure what he meant, but he tried, focusing on Newt’s voice until the rest of the sounds finally started to fade.

“Good,” Newt said. “Now, find Thomas. He’s in the parking lot, cursing because he can’t find the Tylenol.”

He didn’t ask how Newt knew that. He felt a little foggy and a lot tired, and the easiest thing was to find Thomas like Newt had said to. Maybe he was being hypnotized, but it was certainly easier than trying to function normally with his senses going haywire.

“Got him,” he said, voice slow and low.

“Good,” Newt said. “Keep listening to him, and to me. Now, our server’s name is Beth. Someone just flagged her down. She’s getting a refill. Find her.”

Beth was wearing clunky platform shoes. Finding her footsteps was almost as easy as finding Thomas’s. “Got her.”

“Good,” Newt said. “Now just focus on the three of us. Don’t listen to anything else.” He slowly pulled his hands back. “It’s the same thing you did before you manifested,” he said. “Tuning out what you don’t need in favor of what you do. The only difference is that you have more to tune out.”

Minho didn’t get a chance to answer, because just then Thomas flopped back into his seat and plunked a small bottle of Tylenol in front of him. “Found it,” the brunette said.

“Took you long enough,” Minho shot back, opening it and grabbing his Coke.

This time when Beth returned, he didn’t flinch.

 


	4. The rest of the world was black and white.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please, PLEASE note that there is a new warning that I just added. Starting next chapter there will be references to rape. There may be an on-screen rape attempt, I'm not sure yet. There will NOT be any graphic rape.

The text came while everyone’s hands were too covered in hot sauce to answer. Thomas scrambled to get his hands clean so he could check the message.

“Winston’s ready for us,” he said. “So are Ben and Resa.”

Minho, to his private pride, hadn’t jumped or zoned out at the buzz of the phone. He just kept eating.

“Body’s been waiting this long, it’ll keep,” he mumbled through a mouthful of food, pointing at the wings. “Keep eating, they’ll spoil in the car.”

Thomas rolled his eyes but picked up another wing. Newt, Minho noticed, had already finished and wiped his hands. He shot the Guide a quizzical look, which Newt returned with a bland one. Minho shrugged and dove back into the meal. More for him, anyway.

Thomas insisted on driving back to the precinct. After how hard the restaurant had been to deal with, Minho didn’t protest.

Winston was in his office eating his own lunch when they arrived. Minho caught a glimpse of what he was reading, but it was thick with medical jargon he didn’t know. He cleared his throat and knocked on the counter. “Doc,” he said. “Whatcha got for us?”

Winston looked up, eyebrows raised but otherwise unaffected by the sudden intrusion. He swallowed his bite of sandwich and made quick work of wrapping the rest up. “What took you so long?” he asked with a quick smirk.

“Chicken wings don’t wait,” Minho said. “Lead on, let’s see the damage.”

Winston nodded, pulling his lab coat back on as he led the way to the morgue. “I hope for your sake you didn’t get in on Teresa’s betting pool,” he said.

“Betting pool?” Thomas asked. He didn’t seem as surprised as he might have, but then, he and Teresa had been in diapers together. Nothing about her surprised him.

Winston nodded. "About the cause of death. She bet Ben lunch that it was head trauma and it spiraled from there."

"Don't tell me," Minho said, but he could hear the answer in the doctor's voice.

"Don't get me wrong, the stab wounds would've killed her," Winston said. "If she hadn't already sustained such massive head trauma. She died from that while he was stabbing her the first few times."

Minho sighed, shaking his head. Thomas was the one to ask, “And he kept stabbing? Are we thinking this was personal?”

Winston shrugged. “Hey, I just examine the bodies, it’s your job to connect the dots. Although in my book, thirty-seven stab wounds, most of them postmortem, are usually personal.”

“Thirty-seven?” Minho asked.

Winston nodded, pushing open the door to the morgue and ushering them in.

“I found glass fragments in the wounds,” he said. “Which leads me to think that the assailant smashed a bottle over her head, then used that to make the stabs. But here’s the kicker--there were plenty of bottles around, but according to Ben none of them were broken, nor were there any shards substantial enough to have been used as a shiv.”

Minho and Thomas exchanged a look. “She was moved,” Minho murmured.

“That’s the working theory,” Winston agreed. He grasped a sheet covering a table and pulled it back. “Here she is. Her parents were just in an hour ago to confirm the ID. I estimate time of death at around two, maybe three in the morning.”

~

Rachel Chen was even paler now that several hours had passed and she’d been autopsied. But her heritage was still there in her features, in the single lid over each eye and the rich black color of her hair. From the texture of it, Newt would have put money on her having had a white parent, but the Asian blood had won out in virtually every other feature.

The static was still there.

All Guides had the same set of powers. They weren't like Sentinels, who could have a hundred different combinations of powers. Gives were simpler. They were empathic. Exactly to what degree varied, but it was all empathy.

One of the secrets Guides kept was that their empathy didn't extend only to living people. A number of TV mediums were Guides who had washed out of training or quit later on. The rest of them kept that secret for fear of grieving people asking them to contact their loved ones. It wasn't like that. It was just a sense, an imprint of what the person was feeling in their last moments. If the Guide was talking to someone who had been close to the deceased, and the bereaved was thinking about the person, they could tap into generalities, sometimes details, of the deceased’s personality and relationship. But actually contacting the dead was impossible.

Still. The static was annoying. He wished he had a drink.

He wasn’t actively listening to the conversation anymore, but he knew Minho’s mind well enough to piece it together. He and Thomas were arguing about MO and signature and whether this was a crime of passion or a serial-killer-to-be.

“Why don’t we see what Ben and Teresa have to say before jumping to conclusions?” Newt asked.

Thomas looked startled. Maybe Newt had skipped ahead in the conversation on accident.

Minho shrugged, looking at his partner. “Kid’s got a point,” he said. “We don’t know who she was yet.”

Thomas nodded, and Newt took a deliberate step back from the body. The static immediately lessened, which was a relief. Now if they could just get out of here.

~

Newt was getting jumpy.

Minho filed it away under ‘to be discussed in private’, but he had a sense of what it was. Two days wasn’t enough to kick cravings, not when Newt had been self-medicating for God only knew how long.

That wasn’t the important thing, though, so he put it out of his mind. The important thing was--

“Rachel Chen.” Teresa pulled up a file on Minho’s computer. He didn’t ask how she’d gotten his password; some things were better left unknown. “Twenty-eight years old, master’s degree in anthropology, worked as a medium scamming people. Lived with one roommate, Aris Jones.”

“What else you get?” Minho asked, scrolling down through the writeup. No priors, no trouble with the cops, nothing.

“She had no defensive wounds,” Ben said. He’d arrived and perched himself on the desk on Minho’s other side. “Tons of bottles around, plenty of different sets of prints. We didn’t get anything significant off her, though.”

“No forensic evidence?” Thomas asked.

“No remnants of the particular bottle that stabbed her,” Ben said. Minho noticed he avoided saying ‘to death’. Smart boy. Not that smart, though; Minho would bet he lost money in Teresa’s pool.

Ben went on, “No defensive wounds, so no DNA evidence. Too many people partying there last night, so there are footprints all over the ground but nothing we can use. Whoever did this--”

“They were careful,” Minho cut in.

Ben nodded. “Yeah.”

Minho stared at the image of Rachel Chen, eyes narrowed. She’d had a good face. The kind that could smile in a driver’s license photo without looking forced. She’d been a scammer, but one of the gentler kinds. The kind that gave people hope instead of ripping it away. And if she had a roommate, she hadn’t even been a good scammer. Mediums could make enough money to pay off student debt if they worked at it.

“Any reason someone might have wanted her dead?” Thomas asked.

Teresa shrugged. “That, you’ll have to ask her roommate.”

“Yeah,” Minho said, closing out of the window. “We’ll do that.” He stood, logging out as he did. “Stay out of my computer,” he told Teresa, who raised her hands innocently. To Thomas and Newt he said, “Let’s go.”

He caught Newt’s arm in the hallway, tugging him back a step. “You okay?” he asked softly.

Newt shrugged. “I don’t like dead bodies,” he said.

Minho smiled grimly. “Not many people do. You planning to do anything about it?”

Newt stared at him, then yanked his arm away. “Fuck you,” he spat. “I’m not going back on our deal over this.”

He stormed off after Thomas. Minho sighed and followed him. “I didn’t say--”

“I’m a fucking _Guide,_ you shit,” Newt hissed, just barely below Thomas’s hearing. “I know what you didn’t say.”

Minho didn’t try to defend himself to that.

Thomas wasn’t an idiot. He could obviously tell there was tension between the other two, but he wisely didn’t say anything. “So,” he said with forced cheer when they reached the car, “what say we find this Aris and question him?”

“Sounds perfect,” Minho said into the silence that followed.

~

Aris Jones, and formerly Rachel Chen, didn’t live in the city. They lived all the way out in the suburbs, the kind with sprawling lawns outside. A sandy-skinned young man, presumably Aris Jones (though in this kind of neighborhood it could have been a paid gardener), was mowing said lawn when they got there.

“I don’t get it,” Minho said. “If Rachel Chen needed a roommate, what was she doing living out here?”

“Maybe they were a couple,” Thomas offered.

Maybe, Newt thought, they were deep in debt, but the house was worth it.

There was something off about the boy mowing the lawn, something Newt couldn’t quite put his finger on.

“Is it just me, or does he look sick?” Minho muttered.

“How can you tell from out here?” Thomas shot back.

Minho raised his voice as they approached the man. “Hey! Aris Jones! Got a couple questions for you!”

Nothing.

“Maybe he can’t hear you over the mower,” Thomas said.

Suddenly Newt knew what it was, what was off about the man.

Minho ignored both of them, heading toward the man. “Hey!” he called again. He waved his arms to try to get his attention.

The man--Aris Jones--turned the mower to start a new row, and caught sight of the movement. He looked up, and quite suddenly Newt was hit with a wave of

_ Sentinel Guide police no no nononono-- _

It was so strong he doubled over, hands pressed to his ears like he could block his empathy the way the boy had blocked his hearing. He’d been right. Normal people didn’t project like that.

There were hands on his shoulders--Thomas. “Hey, what’s--”

Newt cut him off. “He’s going to run.”

Thomas hesitated. “What? How--”

This time it was Minho who cut him off. “Hey!” the Sentinel yelled, and before Newt had even pulled himself upright again he knew Minho had gone running after the kid. “Shit,” Thomas muttered, and took off after them both.

“Cover your ears,” Newt murmured. He hoped Minho was listening, and that the kid had let go of the control on his hearing. “Don’t ask, just do it.”

He hoped Minho had heard and listened, but he didn’t have time to check. The kid was fast, and he’d get away if Newt didn’t stop him. He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled, high and shrill and at the far edge of human hearing.

Up ahead, Aris Jones dropped to the ground, hands over his ears. Minho doubled over, but he’d covered his ears already. Thomas passed them both and pinned Aris to the ground. Newt knew Thomas well enough after the day’s activities that he could put words to his sense of him.

_ Right now I can arrest you, or we can go inside and talk. Your choice. _

He didn’t know Aris’s mind at all, but it didn’t take a Guide to predict which he’d choose.

Ten minutes later they were in the living room of Aris Jones and Rachel Chen’s house. It was a nice house, befitting the nice neighborhood; but the furnishings inside didn’t match the wealth. Newt would have bet money they only had the house because it put distance between them and their neighbors.

“Why’d you run?” Minho asked. He was leaning against the wall, as far from Newt as he could get. He hadn’t taken the whistle trick well at all.

Newt had a different question. “How many senses do you have?” he asked. “And please, feel free to lie.”

Thomas looked at him, surprise written all over his face. He looked back at Aris. “You’re a Sentinel?”

Aris’s eyes flicked between them. “Three,” he said to Newt.

Newt shook his head. “If you’re going to lie, do it right,” he said. “Say two. Hearing and sight.”

“Fine,” Aris said, almost a growl. “Two.”

Thomas raised a hand. “Why are we encouraging someone to lie to us?”

“Because,” Newt said. “If the SGA finds out there’s a four-sense Sentinel running around with a washed-out empath, they’re going to come knocking and ruin a lot of people’s lives. It’s sort of what they do.”

No one could miss the bitterness in his tone, but Minho was the one to figure out what he’d said. “Rachel Chen was a Guide?”

Aris’s head snapped to look at him. “Was?” he asked softly.

“Empath,” Newt corrected. “Because Guide, like doctor and _unlike_ Sentinel, is a regulated title. It’s a crime to claim to be one when you haven’t been licensed.” He looked at Minho. “That’s where I know her from. We were in the same class starting out. Three months in, suddenly, no more Rachel. She washed out.”

“Guides can flunk out of Guide school?” Thomas asked.

Newt smiled thinly. “For every four- or five-sense Sentinel, there are three empaths,” he said. “And the SGA has a reputation to maintain. So only the best empaths, the ones who can go the distance, ever become Guides.” He looked at Aris. “But I take it she was enough of a Guide for you.”

Aris fidgeted, but turned back to Minho. “What do you mean was?” he asked.

Minho sighed. “Kid…”

“I’m nineteen,” Aris snapped. “I’m not a kid. What do you mean _was?”_

Thomas was the one to answer. “Rachel Chen was stabbed to death sometime last night.”

Aris shook his head numbly, looking between them like he was waiting for someone to yell “April Fool’s.” Finally he focused on Newt. “You’re not here for me?” he whispered.

Newt shook his head. “We didn’t know what either of you were until you ran.”

“You knew,” Aris said. “You’re a Guide--empath--whatever, aren’t you?”

Newt glanced at Thomas, but the man didn’t look surprised. “Yeah,” he said.

Aris nodded, burying his face in his hands. He drew in deep breaths, and Newt could feel him pulling his senses in close, away from the damage and anger and grief that were threatening to send him into a spike or zone-out. Finally he looked up at them again, apparently calm. “What do you need to know?” he asked.

Thomas pulled a pad of paper and a pen from his pocket. “Where were you between one and three this morning?”

“You don’t think I did this?” Aris asked.

“It’s a standard question,” Thomas assured him. “Where were you?”

Aris sighed, dragging his hands through his hair. “Here, asleep, alone. Which is to say no, I don’t have an alibi.”

“Were you two bonded?” Newt asked.

Aris shook his head. “She--she didn’t know how. She helped me get control but…”

On the list of carefully-promoted myths was the one that bonding could only be done deliberately. The SGA liked being the gatekeepers to the one thing that offered both Sentinels and Guides total control over their abilities. But Newt knew better than most that bonding could be done without any ritual. That was how he and Alby had done it. And if he had to guess, Rachel and Aris had done it as well.

Minho took over the questions. “Did Rachel have anyone who might have wanted to hurt her? Maybe a disgruntled client?”

Aris shook his head. “Rachel didn’t scam anyone,” he said.

Minho snorted, but Aris went on. “She didn’t,” he insisted. “She could do what she said she could.”

“Maybe she thought she could,” Newt murmured. A half-trained empath might well have mixed up static with actually contacting the dead.

Aris glared at him. “Rachel never scammed anyone,” he said again.

Minho sighed. “Fine. Don’t suppose you have the names of the people who attended her last show.”

Aris shook his head. “No, but the theater will. At least the one who paid with credit cards. I can give you the information for it.”

“That would be good,” Minho said. “And did she do private seances at all?”

“How’d you afford this house, Aris?” Newt asked before he could answer.

Minho glared, but Newt didn’t take his eyes off the kid.

Aris stuttered. “We, uh--my parents helped pay for it. And Rachel’s shows. And I got student loans…”

Thomas caught on. “Any… less-tasteful sources of income?”

Aris shook his head. “No loan sharks, nothing illegal,” he insisted. He gave a wry smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Just a lot of debt.”

That settled, Minho asked again, “Did she do private seances at all?”

Aris nodded. “She kept the details in her phone,” he said. “She had a little black book she used as backup, though. I can get it for you?”

Minho nodded. “Do that. And the theaters she performed at recently.”

Aris hopped to his feet and scuttled off.

“Think he’s going to run again?” Thomas asked.

Minho shook his head. “The kid loved her,” he said. “Idolized her.”

“If someone had kept me out of the SGA’s clutches, I would too,” Newt muttered.

Thomas sighed. “Is it strictly legal for us not to tell them about him?” he asked Newt.

Newt shrugged. “He said he only has two senses,” he said innocently. “You’re not obligated to press. Besides, there’s no such thing as conspiracy to hide from the SGA. If you found out he was lying, you’d have to arrest him; but ‘even if’ he was lying, Rachel Chen wasn’t committing a crime by helping him hide.”

Minho sighed. "The kid has no training."

“If he had no training the SGA would’ve found him by now. He would’ve spiked or zoned out in public. Rachel taught him. Maybe it wasn’t formal training, but it worked.”

“Okay,” Thomas said. “I’m willing to believe we’re not going to hell for helping the kid hide. Do we believe he was here asleep when Rachel died?”

“I do,” Newt said. “And I believe him when he said Rachel didn’t scam anyone.”

Minho raised an eyebrow. Newt shrugged. “She wasn’t trained,” he said. “She might have believed the myths about what Guides can do.”

Aris came back at that moment, and they shut up. “Here,” he said, holding out a small black journal to Minho. “This has everything you need.”

“Thanks,” the Sentinel said, taking it from him. “One more question. Do you know where Rachel was planning to go last night?”

“Should be in there,” Aris said, scratching his nose. “She had a seance or something. One of her private sessions.”

Minho nodded, pocketing the book. “We’ll be out of your hair now. Stay in town, we might have more questions.”

“My best friend was just murdered,” Aris said lowly. “I’m not going anywhere until you catch who did it.”

~

Minho had dared to feel optimistic when they left Aris’s residence. One crappy medium couldn’t have that many enemies, could she?

The answer was, no, she didn’t. She didn’t have _any._

Every theater she’d performed at swore she was great local talent. No drama, no absurd demands, no fights with audience members. She was better at what she did than the national talent that passed through on tours, and her audiences were always disappointed to see them after having seen Rachel.

Her seance from the previous night turned out to be a bust too. The couple who’d booked her had nothing but glowing commentary, and were obviously distressed when they learned she was dead. Both of them insisted they were in bed at the time of the attack, and given their age Minho believed them.

By the end of the day, they had nothing to show for their work but a headache building between Minho’s eyes.

“I can still smell her,” he grumbled when they entered his apartment building and Thomas left. “Decay and perfume and blood and organs…”

Newt put a hand between his shoulder blades. “I know,” he murmured. “Try to relax.”

Minho glared at him. “Thanks, Captain Obvious,” he snapped.

Newt just watched him patiently, and Minho slowly realized his shoulders were unknotting. “You’re doing it again,” he said accusingly.

“I’m not doing anything,” Newt said, “except giving you something to focus on.”

“I have plenty to focus on,” Minho growled, storming over to his mailbox, trying to move too fast for Newt to keep up. The Guide, infuriatingly enough, kept up and kept his damn hand on Minho’s back.

“I just don’t get,” Minho said as he fumbled his keys out of his pockets, “how so many people can insist that a con artist is a good person.”

“She may not have been a con artist,” Newt murmured. “And you’re not really thinking of her that way. That’s not what’s got you riled up.” His thumb moved in small circles on Minho’s back. Minho wanted to punch him for it. “You’re upset because you thought you’d have a suspect by now.”

“We always have a suspect by now,” Minho snapped, grabbing the mail so quickly the coupon book ripped on the way out. “We might be wrong, but we have something. Somewhere to start.”

“Breathe,” Newt murmured. “You’re setting yourself up for a spike.”

Minho really wanted to tell him to shove it, but he really didn’t need his headache getting any worse. He stopped talking and sucked in a breath through his mouth, let it out slowly.

“Better,” Newt said. He put his other hand on Minho’s arm, rubbing up and down gently. “Tomorrow,” he said, “we’ll track down who was at the party last night. One of them might’ve seen something, yeah?”

“Had to have,” Minho muttered, closing his eyes and pressing his free hand to his temples. “Someone had to have seen something. We need to get in touch with the homeowners, get them not to press charges on the B&E or no one will come forward. Captain said he’s doing a press release…”

“Relax.” Newt squeezed his shoulder. “Let’s just go back to the apartment. We need to give you some more practice before you go back into work.”

Minho nodded, shutting his mailbox. “Let’s go,” he said, turning to Newt.

He sorted through the mail in the elevator. Aside from the coupon book, there was an offer for a new credit card, for an auto loan, and for college, all trash. A bill, his W-2 from work, and--

“That’s mine,” Newt said, grabbing it.

Minho had barely even seen the SGA seal in the corner. “Why is your mail coming to my apartment?” he asked.

“Because I filled out the COA form when we made our deal,” Newt said. “I’m surprised, usually it takes longer to process.”

He tucked the letter in his pocket, and Minho raised an eyebrow. “Not going to read it?”

Newt shrugged defensively. “It’s private.”

“Ah.” Minho left it alone. Soon enough they’d reached his apartment, and he slid the key in the lock and let them in. The junk mail he dropped in the trash can by the door; the rest he tossed on the kitchen table. Newt slipped past him and ducked into his room.

“Hey!” Minho said. “What about practice?”

“Five minutes,” Newt called back.

He was back six minutes and seven seconds later. “So,” he said. “Practice.” He set his hands on the back of a kitchen chair, looking Minho over. “Let’s start with a baseline. Tell me everything you’re aware of right now.”

Minho sighed, sitting down across the table from him. “A lot,” he said.

“One sense at a time,” Newt said. “Start with hearing.”

Minho put his face in his hands, groaning.

“This is how we start,” Newt said. “So start.”

He sighed again, took stock, and began.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, your comments keep me writing.


	5. Like we stood a chance.

“I’ve been thinking,” Newt said, scuffing a hand through his hair as he went into the kitchen the next morning. “We could--”

He stopped. Blinked. It had been a long time since he’d been taken by surprise but there was Minho, holding up a finger, phone to his ear.

“Right,” Newt muttered. Like the word was a signal to his brain, his senses flooded back online. Now he knew who was on the phone, and what they were saying.

He sighed and headed for the bathroom. He was going to need to shower if they had another body.

As he turned the water on, he followed the conversation in his mind, tracking his sense of the speakers.

Nick had said the name of the victim, but even Newt’s abilities weren’t good enough to tell what that name was. He knew Minho was writing it down, though.

_When was she found?_ Minho was asking. And asking about the MO. From what Newt could piece together, it wasn’t identical to the first body. Cleaner, more controlled. And something else--something before she died this time. She’d been found just an hour ago, in a parking lot somewhere nearby. Although the MOs didn’t match, Nick was sure it was the same killer.

Newt showered quickly and dried off and dressed with barely any care to what he put on. His shirt was blue this time, bright neon blue. Alby had gotten it for him, and the orange. He’d gotten most of Newt’s shirts, back when he needed a beacon to focus on. Then when he got control he’d given Newt his old hoodies to hide them under.

Thinking about Alby made him stop, his hands shaking. He put them on the desk and took in a few deep breaths. His head was spinning. God, he wanted a drink…

He forced himself upright and finished straightening the shirt, then grabbed jeans and tugged them on. They threatened to fall down his hips; they had for a while now. He’d been on a tight budget, before Minho came to find him. He grabbed a belt and tightened it, tugged the shirt down over it, ran a hand through his hair to make it lie right, and opened the door to find Minho just raising a hand to knock.

The Sentinel blinked down at him, then shook his head. “Right,” he muttered. “Guide.”

Technically, as long as Newt never called _himself_ that, he wasn’t breaking any laws. Minho knew the status quo, anyway, he knew Newt wasn’t on speaking terms with the SGA.

“I need coffee,” Newt said rather than answer.

Minho held up a travel mug. “I made two,” he said. “Captain wants us there now.”

Newt took the mug and took a sip. “Perfect,” he sighed. “Let’s go, then.”

~

The parking lot, it turned out, belonged to a Wal-Mart. The body had been dumped halfway down one of the aisles, as far as possible from any lampposts.

“Don’t suppose we have security footage?” Minho asked.

Thomas shook his head. Once more he’d arrived before them, and already had gloves on his hands to avoid contaminating the scene. Minho pulled his own on with open distaste; he hated the feeling of latex on his skin, a dislike that had only gotten stronger since he manifested.

“Let me guess,” Thomas said to Newt. “You drove?”

Newt grinned. “Is he always this grumpy when someone else drives?”

“No,” Thomas answered. “Sometimes he’s worse.”

“Newt drives like a city boy,” Minho said. “It’s a miracle he didn’t hit anyone.”

“I am a city boy,” Newt said. “What’s that got to do with my driving?”

Thomas snorted. “He means you drive like someone who hasn’t had to drive in five years, because you take the bus or the train,” he translated.

“Ah.” Newt nodded slowly. “City boy, like New York or Chicago city. Got it.”

“Exactly. And to answer your question,” he said to Minho, “all the security cameras in the parking lot are dummies.”

“You’re kidding,” Minho said flatly.

“Wish I was.”

Minho sighed, heading toward the perimeter of the scene. “What are the odds our killer knew that?”

“Hard to say. The body’s out of sight of any of the supposed cameras, which suggests the killer thought he had to worry about them, but…” Thomas shrugged.

They were in sight of the body now, and Minho came to a sudden halt. “You gotta be kidding me.”

Thomas gave him a look, and Newt looked ready to put his hand on him again. Minho wanted to wave him off, but the whiff he’d gotten of the body had turned into an assault on his nose. He couldn’t smell anything but that floral, sharp scent. He was falling and he knew he was, zoning out but he couldn’t stop it…

“Detective.”

His head jerked around to look at Newt. The Guide’s hand was on his arm again, he noted distantly. Rubbing, soothing. Grounding. Guiding.

“It’s the waitress,” he said. His voice sounded different to his own ears, like he was speaking underwater. But he heard his Guide clearly.

“What waitress?” Newt asked.

Someone else was talking, but Minho couldn’t hear the words at all, just a garbled sound in his ears. All he could make out was Newt’s voice and his own.

“The waitress from the restaurant,” Minho said. Newt’s shirt was very blue. It was something to focus on. “The restaurant we had lunch at yesterday, it’s the waitress. Beth.”

Newt’s eyes flicked to the side, and Minho followed them. “How can you tell?” he asked. His voice was soft. Soothing.

It was a good question. The woman had been strangled, her face turned bloated and purple and unrecognizable. But--“Same perfume,” Minho said.

Newt nodded. “Right then,” he said, moving his arm to Minho’s shoulder. There was a sudden briskness to his movements, and it brought clarity crashing back. His senses roared back to life, free from their strange, hypnotic focus on the Guide. (His Guide.)

He shoved the thought away and turned back to the scene and found Thomas in front of him, looking at him oddly.

“Dude,” his partner said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but do you need a few more days off?”

Minho scoffed, although there was that traitorous part of himself that said yes. “What other way is there to take that?” he asked. “I’m fine.”

Thomas shook his head. “Dude, you were out of it for like ten minutes.”

A rock plummeted into Minho’s stomach. “Ten minutes?” he asked weakly, looking at Newt.

Newt wouldn’t meet his eyes.

~

When Minho zoned out, it was so sudden Newt almost didn’t realize. But he stopped talking and the sense flooded Newt suddenly and unmercifully, the knowledge that his Sentinel was very far away.

_Not_ his Sentinel, he reminded himself even as he stepped in front of Minho and grabbed his arm.

“Minho,” he murmured. “Detective Park, look at me, please.”

Nothing. Minho didn’t move.

He tried. For ten minutes, while Minho refused to respond and Thomas grew more and more worried, he tried every litany he knew to bring a Sentinel back from a zone-out. But whatever sense Minho was zoned on, he’d completely blocked out his hearing.

Newt was desperate. Minho had to recover. They couldn’t afford for him not to. He had to recover _now,_ before an ambulance was called and someone found out what was happening and the SGA was notified there was a rogue Sentinel. Minho would lose his job, Newt would lose his, and he’d be alone again. So he did something he’d sworn from the beginning not to do.

He wasn’t trained for this, wasn’t trained to bring an unbonded Sentinel back from the brink. He could have done it with Alby, but that was a different animal. Odds were it wouldn’t work at all. But he reached with his Guide senses, found the thread of Minho’s consciousness, and pulled it toward him, wrapped it around himself and turned himself into Minho’s anchor.

And Minho responded.

He couldn’t look at the Sentinel now that he was back to himself. Minho didn’t--couldn’t--know what he did, but now that he’d done it Newt couldn’t shut off that awful voice in his head that kept calling Minho _his._ Minho wasn’t his. This was temporary and contingent on Newt toeing the line, and he’d never in his life wanted a drink as badly as he did right now. He needed to escape but his Sentinel-- _Minho_ needed him and he couldn’t leave him now. He was so, so fucked.

~

“Victim’s name was Beth Childs,” Ben said. “But we have more for you than that.”

Teresa jumped in. “Unlike our first victim, Beth here was carrying a student ID and an expired SGA license.”

“She was a Sentinel?” Minho asked.

“Sentinel licenses don’t expire,” Newt said. “She was a Guide.”

“Points to the shrink,” Teresa said, holding out two evidence bags. Thomas took them and showed the cards inside to Minho.

“Guide license expired a year ago,” Minho muttered. He looked at Newt. “Why wouldn’t she get this renewed?”

Newt shrugged. “You have to retake the test to get it renewed,” he said. “Unless you’re bonded; those Guides’ licenses don’t expire. She could’ve flunked.”

“So,” Thomas asked, “are we going to have the SGA breathing down our necks or not?”

“Doubt it.” Newt smiled wryly. “The SGA is very good at forgetting people who might mar its sterling reputation. Most likely they won’t even notice two former Guides have been killed unless someone points it out.”

Minho snorted. “Great people you used to work for,” he muttered.

Newt didn’t answer. He still wasn’t looking at him, and it was starting to unsettle Minho, starting to twist something deep inside of him that had responded when Newt pulled him out of the zone-out. (And why _had_ it taken so long? Minho needed to get a straight answer out of the blond for that one, but that wasn’t something he could ask here.)

“So,” he said to distract himself. “The killer strangled her, then drove out to a freaking Wal-Mart and dumped her body.”

“Actually,” Teresa said, “the killer tied her up, raped her, _then_ strangled her and dumped the body.”

Minho looked at her sharply. She grimaced.

“Ligature marks on her wrists, and women don’t usually wear skirts without panties,” she said.

“Shit,” Minho breathed, looking at the woman. “That’s a total shift in MO,” he said. “How sure are we this is the same guy?”

“I don’t know,” Thomas said, shaking his head. “I mean the victimology’s different too. Beth Childs was a white girl five years younger than Rachel Chen. But how many killers can a town like this have at once, and targeting disgraced empaths?”

Minho sighed. “Yeah,” he said. “Not many.”

~

Beth Childs had lived on campus, in a suite with two roommates. They were as much a study in opposites as Rachel and Beth had been. Harriet was willowy and dark-skinned, with hair shaved close to her head; Sonya was short with red hair and skin that was probably pale under its thick coating of freckles. Neither of them showed much reaction to the news that Beth was dead. Newt had a feeling they’d both lost too many people to be surprised by it anymore.

“What do you need to know?” Harriet asked, folding her arms over her chest and standing very straight. She reminded Newt very much of Aris, but he was positive neither of Beth’s roommates was a Sentinel.

“Where were the two of you between ten and midnight last night?” Minho asked.

“Here.” Sonya was the one to answer. “We had some of our classmates over to study for our geology test, didn’t break up until one AM. We can give you their names if you want.”

“Not necessary,” Thomas said. The rape kit had come back positive for semen. Neither of Beth’s roommates could have left that there. “Do you know where Beth was planning to be?”

Sonya shrugged. “Not really. Beth was, well, kind of a partier. I just thought that was where she was.”

“We sort of always thought that was where she was,” Harriet said wryly.

There was nothing else they could tell them. Newt could have told the detectives that, but Minho and Thomas questioned them a while longer before giving them Thomas’s card and telling them to call if they thought of anything.

“He wants them to be found,” Newt said when they were out in the hallway.

Minho looked over his shoulder at him; Newt stared fixedly at the wall beyond him. “Why do you say that?”

“The location,” he said. “He puts them in places isolated enough for him to not be seen but public enough for them to be found quickly. He doesn’t have the courage to put them on display, but he wants to be sure they’re found.”

It wasn’t just that, of course, but Newt couldn’t explain the static better than that. He knew that the person who had done that wanted the women found. He just didn’t know why. His head was pounding from the onslaught of psychic impressions the crime scene and college had given him. _God,_ he needed a drink.

Thomas looked at Minho. “So if he wants them found, is it for their sake, or his? Power trip or last respects?”

Minho was fine. There was no need for Newt to put his hand on him. But he did anyway, caught up and put his hand lightly on the Sentinel’s waist. Instantly the throbbing in his head subsided.

This was _very_ bad.

~

Newt was silent all through the car ride--they all piled into Thomas’s car because Minho refused to ride with Newt any more than absolutely necessary. It didn’t bother the detectives; they could keep bouncing theories off each other, discussing the sense Newt had that the killer wanted the bodies found, figuring out what direction to go in next. But there was a sense in the Sentinel part of his brain that he’d fucked up, that he’d damaged something irreparably. He didn’t like the sense at all. There was nothing to fuck up, because Newt wasn’t his Guide and he wasn’t Newt’s Sentinel and they were _nothing_ to each other except a temporary convenience.

He was in a bad mood by the time they reached Beth’s workplace, and when Newt brushed their hands together on the way in the tension melted for a minute, which only made him feel worse when he returned to himself. What the _hell_ was wrong with him?

The lanky blond standing at the hostess station introduced himself as Zart. “Three?” he asked, reaching for menus before Minho held up his badge.

“We need to talk to the owner,” he said firmly. “And anyone else who knew Beth Childs.”

Zart looked between them, mouth slightly open. “Knew?” he asked. His voice was a croak. “Past tense?”

Minho nodded. “Just get them, please.”

The owner turned out to be a short, hairy black man whose name badge read FRYPAN. “My legal name is Siggy,” he said when Minho asked. “You’d take a nickname too.”

Newt gave him a sympathetic grimace. Minho pretended not to see it. Newt was still ignoring him and then touching him at random intervals and it was getting annoying.

Thomas took over. “We need to talk to you about Beth Childs,” he said shortly. “She was murdered last night.”

Frypan winced, looking around to see if anyone had heard the words. “Not out here,” he said. “My office. Zart!” The blond looked up from the stand. “You’re in charge until I get back, you hear?”

Five minutes later they were settled in the owner’s office. It was cluttered, stacks of paper having spilled from the desk onto most of the chairs. All three men elected to stand, while Frypan sat on the one vacant chair, rubbing his beard.

“Beth was murdered?” he asked.

Thomas nodded. “Last night, sometime near midnight.”

Frypan whistled lowly, shaking his head. “That’s awful. That’s just awful. I heard about the girl a couple nights ago but… Damn. Beth? Who’d want to kill Beth?”

“We were hoping you could tell us,” Minho said. There was a headache building behind his eyes again. The office smelled of dust and sweat and it was all he could do not to start sneezing. Automatically he found himself looking to Newt and focusing on the scent of soap and coffee that clung to him, and mentally scolded himself for doing so. Temporary convenience, he reminded himself. Nothing more, nothing less.

He went on, “Did Beth have any enemies? Any altercations with other staff or customers? Maybe someone who got a little handsy?”

Frypan shook his head. “Wish I could tell you,” he said. “I’d like to help you, I would. But Beth might not have had many friends, but she didn’t have _any_ enemies. She was too good at what she did.”

“Any customers who might have wanted more from her than food and drink?” That was Thomas.

Frypan’s eyes went wide but again he shook his head. “You could ask Zart, he runs the front of the house and knows the wait staff better. But I didn’t hear about it, and the waitresses are usually good about telling me if someone’s harassing them. We’re a small place, we take care of our own.”

Minho nodded. “One more thing,” he said. “We need to talk to the rest of your wait staff, and any cooks who knew Beth well.”

“Of course,” Frypan said, rubbing a hand over his beard again. “I’ll send Zart back first, he’ll be able to tell you who else to talk to. Use this room, it’s the only private place in the building.”

“Thank you,” Thomas said, and Frypan hurried out of the door.

A few minutes later the door opened again and Zart slipped in. He was quiet, Minho noted; even with his ears he hadn’t heard the guy more than a few seconds before he came in. Then again, the noise from the restaurant proper was sort of a roar in his ears. It was a wonder he could even make out the words being said to him from two feet away.

Again Thomas asked if Beth had any enemies. “Frypan said she didn’t have friends, but not enemies either. But he said you knew the wait staff better.”

Zart snorted. “Not having friends is a nice way to put it,” he said. “Beth was a bitch.”

Minho’s eyebrows went up. “Wow, no love lost between you, huh?”

“Hey, I thought it was funny.” Zart shrugged, which seemed to take longer on him than other people. “She was catty and mean when she wanted to be. She had this perfect smiling mask she’d wear with customers, charm them into leaving a fifty-percent tip, but when she was with other wait staff or me, she was a bitch.”

“Anyone maybe take that more personally than most?” Minho asked.

Another shrug. “Frankie and her got on worst,” he said. “But most people didn’t mind.”

“How about the cooks?”

“Nah, the cooks loved her. That mask she had for the customers? She had an even better one for the cooks, because she knew good food got her better tips. Anything that was going to a table she was serving came out perfect, fast, and piping hot.”

“Did you all know she used to be a Guide?” That was from Newt, and the sudden question after his silence in the car ride made Minho do a double-take.

Zart nodded slowly. “Yeah, we did. She claimed she just didn’t bother taking the test to renew her license, but no one totally believed that. She wasn’t really the ‘guiding’ type, although I swear she was using her abilities to find the right buttons to push at the tables. No one gets tips that massive that consistently without cheating.”

Minho nodded, glancing at Newt. The Guide was once again looking at the wall, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “Where were you between ten and midnight last night?” he asked Zart.

“Here,” Zart said. “With Fry. We don’t close until midnight on Fridays.”

“Didn’t go out for lunch breaks?”

Zart smiled. “We get lunch here,” he said. “Everyone does, we get free wings.”

Minho looked at Thomas, who nodded, flipping his notebook shut. “That’s all,” Minho said to Zart. “We’ll be in touch. We do need to talk to Frankie, though.”

~

Frankie was a bust. So were the cooks and servers who the detectives interviewed just in case. One of the waitresses mentioned a customer getting handsy with Beth, but hadn’t seen him for a week. All in all, the day was a repeat of the previous one, with the small addition of a splitting headache. But then, he deserved that. He’d panicked, broken his own rule and gone in Minho’s head. And they were both reacting; he could sense the tension radiating off the Sentinel, mirroring what he was feeling.

Minho grabbed his arm as soon as they were in the apartment, and although his headache finally receded for a few precious moments Newt flinched.

“What the _hell_ ,” Minho growled, “is going on? Why did it take you so long to get me out of that zone-out? Why are you being so distant? What did you _do?_ ”

His anger was a palpable thing, washing over Newt like a hot wave. No, not anger. Frustration. Minho wasn’t raging, wasn’t truly pissed off at Newt. He was just confused, and he was a man who didn’t take well to confusion.

Newt could tell him. But if he told him, there’d be no going back.

He jerked his arm away. “You were deep in a zone-out,” he said calmly. “Deeper than you’ve been before. It took longer to pull you out. And I have a _fucking_ headache is why I’ve been so ‘distant’. I didn’t do _anything_.”

It was the only lie he’d told the Sentinel, and he knew Minho could hear it because his eyes narrowed.

“I’m going to bed,” he informed the man, and went into his room as quickly as he could without seeming like he was fleeing. He locked the door and leaned against it, dragging a hand over his face.

God, he needed a drink.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter I've completed so far, so as always, your comments keep me writing.


	6. Remember when you couldn't take the heat?

"The homeowners," Nick said, "have agreed not to press charges against anyone who comes forward with information about the murder. We encourage anyone with information to call or come in. Thank you."

Minho flicked the TV off, looking at Newt. "Into the station we go," he said with a sigh. "To take calls from jokers and kids who don't know anything but are scared someone will finger them for the B&E."

Newt's shirt was an eye searing green today. Minho had to keep reminding himself not to stare.

Newt shrugged. He looked like he was going to put a hand on Minho's shoulder, but at the last minute shoved his hands in his pockets instead. "You never know," he said with forced cheer. "Maybe there won't be many callers and Gally will handle them all."

Minho snorted. "Don't I wish. Get your coffee and a book, you're gonna have nothing but free time today."

~

Minho's fears, as it turned out, were overblown, but not by much. The phone weren't exactly ringing off the hook, but there were frequent enough calls that Minho and Thomas were restricted to the station for the day.

Newt wasn't allowed to answer phones, so he settled in a chair by Minho's desk reading a book he'd found in the flat. His head itched with the reflected stress coming from his--from Minho and Thomas.

Minho hung up the phone and slumped in his chair. The movement brought his knees in contact with Newt’s. Instantly Newt’s headache lessened. He moved his chair away. He’d gotten too close to the Sentinel already.

Thomas hung up the phone after his latest call and looked at Minho. “Here’s the thing I don’t get,” he said. “Where the hell did that rape come from? Rachel Chen was an attack of opportunity that got weirdly personal. I get that. The killer liked the thrill and upped the ante. I get that. I don’t get why someone escalates from murder to rape.”

Minho drummed a pen on the table. Newt could tell he was mulling it over, but something else had just occurred to him.

“I need to talk to Nick,” he said abruptly, standing up. Minho looked up at him, but the phone rang again and he had to pick up.

The captain was in his office on the phone with someone who Newt surmised was important. He held up a finger to tell Newt to wait, so the empath took a seat in the chair across Nick’s desk from him.

“Yes, I understand,” he said. “Yes, I will most certainly keep you informed. All right. Goodbye.” He hung up and sat forward, folding his hands on the desk and looking at Newt. “So, Mr. Newton,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“It’s Newt,” he said automatically. Then he answered the question with one of his own. “Why did you peg Rachel Chen as a serial?”

Nick blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“Rachel Chen’s murder,” he repeated. “Thomas said you were treating it as a possible serial. Why? Were there similar murders in other counties? It would have been on the news if this was the second in a pattern.”

Nick sighed. “I trusted my gut,” he said. “And my gut was right.”

“Why?” Newt asked again. “Why did you gut peg this as a serial? If you were a vainer man I’d say you just wanted the attention of having a serial in your jurisdiction, but you’re too practical for that, and you never told anyone outside the department you thought it was a serial in any case. So why make your job harder? Serials break all the normal rules. They need special tactics to find them. They involve the FBI and the SGA more often than not. Why not treat it as a one-off?”

Another sigh and the captain leaned back in his chair. “Because when I saw that crime scene--how many times she’d been stabbed--I saw a killer who wasn’t done. Her death wasn’t enough for him, so it seemed obvious to me that brutalizing her body wouldn’t be either.”

That made sense. And it made a lot of things come into sharp focus for a brief second before they slipped away again.

“Who says the murder is the endgame?” Newt said aloud.

Nick frowned. “What do you mean?”

“We’ve been treating this like the murders are the whole point.” Something was there, skirting around the edge of his words, but he couldn’t pinpoint it. “What if…” His headache spiked abruptly and he shook his head. “Never mind,” he muttered. “Lost it.”

Nick drummed his fingers slowly on the arms of his chair. “Okay,” he said. “Well, if you find it again, let me or Detective Park know.”

“I will,” he promised, getting to his feet. “Thanks for answering honestly.”

He was almost to the door when Nick spoke up. “Mr. Newton.”

“It’s Newt,” he said again.

“But I’m interested in Zach Newton,” Nick said mildly. “I want to know why a disgraced former Guide is treating my detective instead of a more conventional counselor.”

He considered that, and gave Nick half the truth. “Detective Park needed faster results,” he said, “and I had nothing else to do.” He turned to face Nick again, expression guarded. “How long have you known who I am?”

“I looked you up the second I met you. I just wanted to see if you’d tell me on your own.”

Newt shook his head. “I don’t like talking about it.” That at least was honest.

“I understand.” Nick nodded. “I’ll talk to you again soon, I’m sure.”

Newt sincerely hoped not, but he nodded and returned to the bullpen.

~

Something was wrong.

Not just with the case--there were a lot of things wrong with the case and not a whole lot right with it. Something was wrong with Newt. The Guide hadn’t explained why the zone-out the day before had lasted so long, but whatever had happened, it had made Newt retreat into himself. He wouldn’t even look at Minho if he could avoid it. It worried the detective--if Newt backed out of their deal he was fucked. And at the same time it pissed him off that it was worrying him so much.

Newt returned from whatever conversation he’d had with the captain and sat down beside Minho again, deliberately out of easy contact range. It bothered Minho, and it bothered him that it bothered him. He’d set this up because he didn’t _want_ a Guide. He didn’t want to be so dependent on anyone.

He spun in his chair to avoid looking at the blond, and saw a boy coming into the bullpen, carrying a backpack on his shoulders and looking around nervously.

“Hi,” he said when he got close. “Um, are you detectives?”

Minho glanced at the backpack, then at the kid. He was young, probably high school, pudgy and curly-haired. Probably not a threat.

“He’s not here to hurt anyone, calm down.”

Minho glanced at Newt, but the Guide hadn’t even looked up from his book. He turned back to the kid.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m Detective Park, this is Detective Ellison. Newt here is a ride-along. What do you need?”

The boy shifted his bag a little higher on his shoulders. Probably had come straight from school, Minho thought. He glanced at his watch. Correction: the kid was probably _skipping_ school.

“I, um.” The kid swallowed, glanced between the three men. “I’m Chuck--’s my name. I was at the party a couple nights ago.”

A rustle of paper told Minho that even Newt had put down his book to listen to this.

~

_ He’s a minor. _

The words flicked across Newt’s mind, and despite how careful he’d been, despite the fact that he’d avoided even the most casual contact, he could feel them flitting into Minho’s mind from his.

He didn’t have time to fix his mistake. He wasn’t even sure he _could_ fix it. But it was Thomas, not him, who asked, “How old are you, Chuck?”

Chuck shifted nervously on his feet. “Fourteen,” he mumbled.

Thomas glanced at Minho, then back to Chuck. “We need to call your parents,” he said, surprisingly gently. “We’re not allowed to question you without them present.”

Chuck winced. “Do you have to?” he asked. “Can’t you like, I dunno, just listen, and not question?”

Minho snorted. Thomas shook his head. “Nice try, but we need them here.”

“Chuck,” Newt said softly, “more people will die if you don’t call them and have them come in.”

Chuck looked at him pleadingly, and Newt was hit with a flood of

_ They’re gonna ground me spank me take away my allowance never let me out again _

“What grade are you in?” Newt asked abruptly.

Another wince. “Eighth.”

Eighth grade. Still years away from sophomore year of high school, years away from being scanned and found out. Years away from becoming another Rachel or Beth or even Newt, another could-have-been Guide. But probably already showing signs. Probably…

“Chuck,” he said softly. “If you call your parents, I can help you with your headaches.”

Chuck’s eyes went wide. “How’d you--?”

Newt smiled. “I’m psychic,” he said lightly. “Do we have a deal?”

Chuck chewed his lip but nodded. “Can I use your phone?”

~

Twenty minutes later Chuck’s father arrived. Mr. Dalton was a stern-looking man with short-cropped grey-and-black hair slicked back like a rocker’s, which contrasted oddly with the sharp pinstripe suit that looked suspiciously pricey and probably tailored.

Minho and Thomas greeted him. Newt had taken Chuck over to a corner of the bullpen and was doing something that Minho suspected was Guide work. Newt had refused to answer when Minho asked what he was doing, anyway, which usually meant Guide stuff.

Mr. Dalton’s back and voice were stiff as rails. “I understand my son got into some trouble.”

“No trouble, sir,” Minho corrected quickly. He understood the concern Chuck had that he’d be punished. He wanted to keep that from happening if he could, and he knew Thomas felt the same. “Your son came forward with possible information about a murder.”

“How would my son know anything about a murder?”

Thomas beckoned him further into the bullpen. “That’s what we’d like to ask him now that you’re here,” he said. “If you’d allow us to question him.”

Mr. Dalton nodded, and Thomas led him to an interrogation room while Minho went to collect Chuck.

He sent the kid ahead so he could catch Newt’s arm. “What’s going on with you?” he hissed.

Newt jerked his arm away. “First of all, don’t touch me,” he snapped. “I have a headache and you’re not helping.” His heart stuttered as he said it, in that telltale pattern Minho knew meant he was lying. He didn’t have time to analyze that, though, because the Guide kept talking. “Chuck’s an empath,” he said. “A powerful one, and as of yet untrained. I know what he’s going through, I wanted to help him. Is that alright with you?”

Minho scowled but stepped back. He wasn’t going to get any better of an answer. “If you’ve got such a headache why don’t you just go home?” he snapped. “Not like you’re being useful here anyway.”

“Fine,” the Guide shot back, and brushed past Minho and out of the bullpen.

Minho sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. Newt wasn’t the only one with a headache, and his had spiked the second the Guide left. What was worse, he had a horrible feeling he knew why.

Trying in vain to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach, he went into the interrogation room.

Thomas frowned when he saw Minho. “Where’s Newt?”

“Went home sick,” Minho said shortly and sat down beside Thomas, across from Chuck and his father.

Chuck’s father frowned, looking between them. “Is everything alright?” he asked stiffly.

“Everything’s fine,” Minho said. “Let’s get started.”

Thomas nodded. “Starting at the beginning is probably a good place,” he said. “Chuck, how did you all get into the house?”

Chuck fidgeted.

“No one’s going to get in trouble, Chuck,” Thomas said gently. “Not from us.”

Chuck glanced at his father, who sighed. “Let me see if I can guess what my son isn’t saying,” he said. “The homeowners gave us a key. They pay our oldest Robbie to water their plants and feed and walk their dog when they’re out of town. Robbie must have used the key to let some friends in.”

Minho looked at Chuck, who nodded miserably.

“You’re not in trouble for Robbie,” Chuck’s father told him. Minho heard what he wasn’t saying--Chuck was still in trouble.

“Chuck,” Thomas said, “did you see the person who dropped Rachel Chen’s body?”

Chuck shook his head. “But I saw his car.”

Thomas leaned forward, glancing at Minho. “You saw his car?”

Minho was more skeptical. “How do you know it was his?”

“I--I guess I don’t.” Chuck looked between the detectives. “But I mean, he parked in front of the house and he wasn’t the owner.”

Now Minho was interested. “When did you see him?”

“Well--that’s why we ran.” Chuck looked at his dad. “We were gonna clean up, I swear. The owners weren’t supposed to find out--we all just panicked--”

“Keep going,” Mr. Dalton said sternly.

Chuck turned back to the detectives, fidgeting. “It, uh. We saw it pulling up and we thought it was the homeowners coming back early so we all ran. But I went out the front way because the back was too crowded, and I saw the car.”

“Describe it.” Minho pulled out a notepad and pen. “Did you get the license plate?”

“Part of it,” Chuck said. “It--it was a sedan, it looked black but it stopped in front of the porch and I saw it was green. I didn’t see a logo and I don’t know the model but the license plate started with R-A-B and ended with 3.”

“And this person parked in front of the house?” Thomas asked gently.

Chuck nodded.

Minho looked at his partner, smiling grimly. “Can’t be many green sedans with that partial,” he said.

“No, there can’t.” Thomas stood up. “I’ll run them down. Chuck,” he said to the young boy, “you probably just saved a lot of lives.”

Minho was pretty sure Thomas included that for the benefit of Chuck’s father, so he’d go easy on the kid. Not that he objected. Chuck deserved credit for coming forward, not blame for going along with his older brother’s scheme. Minho might have even done similar, except that, aside from Thomas being the more empathetic, Minho was fighting the worst headache of his life.

Apparently Thomas noticed, because he looked sideways at him when they were both sitting at their desks again. “You okay, man? You look like maybe you should go home sick too.”

Minho shook his head. “I’m fine,” he muttered, ignoring the part of him that agreed wholeheartedly with the suggestion. And the part that agreed solely because Newt was at home.

~

There were a lot of myths regarding bonding, most of them encouraged by the SGA. A lot of them were contradictory, like the myth that any unbonded Guide and Sentinel would bond automatically and the myth that bonding was triggered by sex. But the most popular (and the most widely believed) was that bonding was always a deliberate act, with rituals required to do it properly.

Unfortunately, that myth was entirely false. As Newt had just inadvertently proven.

Technically, he hadn’t bonded with Minho, not fully. What they had was a pre-bond, which needed to be constantly fed or it would wither. And it demanded to be fed. Every brush of skin against skin, or even clothing against clothing, fed the bond. Every time they made eye contact it fed it. If it was left unchecked it would finish within a week, and then Newt’s plans to vanish at the end of his three-month stint with Minho would fall apart. If he’d been a weaker Guide, the only thing Newt would have had to do was retreat to the apartment for a day or two and avoid contact with Minho. But as evidenced by the fact that he’d already sent a telepathic message through their pre-bond, Newt was not a weaker Guide.

Since he’d gotten back to the apartment, he’d done everything he could to retreat from the bond. He’d tried to sleep, he’d drawn his powers into his core like he’d learned in the Academy, he’d filled his mind with anything and everything he could that wasn’t Minho. None of it was working, and what was worse, his headache was _killing_ him. And as time went on, a little voice grew in his head.

There was one way to shut off his powers and starve the bond. Unfortunately, it was something he’d promised not to do.

~

“Got him.” Thomas smacked the desk like he was a drummer announcing a good joke, grinning. “Michael Janson, former Assistant Director of the regional SGA office.”

“Why the hell’s an SGA official killing empaths?” Minho asked. He had a sinking feeling. The SGA had been awfully quiet for their former students dying. And now one of their directors’ cars was connected to the crime? Could it have been an official job?

“I have no idea,” Thomas said, in a tone that implied he had the same thought Minho was having. He stood. “Let’s go find out, shall we?”

~

His hands were shaking as he searched the apartment. Minho had banned him from drinking, but he struck Newt as an occasional drinker himself. There had to be something here.

Finally, at the back of the pantry, he found a bottle of whiskey. Mostly full. Perfect.

He set it on the table and sat down, folding his shaking hands. This was a bad idea. Minho wouldn’t take it well. And no matter how much he told himself he was doing it to kill the bond, he knew the truth. He was just too weak.

~

“Professor Janson,” Minho called. “A word?”

The man turned away from the podium to face him. Minho examined him as he and Thomas descended the steps of the lecture hall.

“I’m sorry,” Janson said. “I don’t recognize you from my class.”

Minho held up his badge, and Janson’s polite smile faded into a startled gape. “You found it?”

Minho blinked. “Found what?”

Janson frowned, looking between the detectives. He was old, Minho realized. His face was lined and his hair was white, although he still had the build of a younger man. He was wearing sunglasses inside, which Minho would have thought was a sign of a hangover if it wasn’t for his nose. The man didn’t smell of alcohol at all. He smelled of a lot of other things, so many Minho couldn’t decipher them without Newt’s help--but he knew the smell of alcohol and it wasn’t on Janson at all.

“My car,” Janson said slowly. “Isn’t that why you’re here?”

Minho looked at Thomas, who frowned. “No,” he said. “We’re here on a different matter. What happened to your car?”

“It was stolen,” Janson said. “I reported it four days ago.”

And just like that, their only lead turned to dust.

~

It was the wave of frustration that did it. If he was feeling Minho’s emotions so strongly despite everything, they were too close to bonded for comfort. And Newt, well. No matter what he told himself, he wasn’t sure he could handle being bonded to anyone after Alby.

“Bottoms up,” he muttered, and poured himself a glass.

~

The apartment smelled of liquor.

Minho narrowed his eyes. His headache had been building all afternoon, getting worse and worse until Thomas sent him home with the promise he’d get the paperwork done for both of them. And Newt had been here, apparently getting shitfaced.

It wasn’t hard to track the scent, and Minho stubbornly refused to ponder why his senses had chosen this moment to come under control. He just followed the scent to Newt’s room and pushed the door open.

“The hell is this?” he demanded.

Newt was sitting against the wall, knees pulled up, head in one hand and an empty bottle of whiskey in the other. He looked up when Minho entered the room, glassy eyes slowly focusing on Minho. “You’re home,” he said, sounding simultaneously relieved and horrified.

Minho scowled, crossing the room and grabbing the bottle from Newt’s hand. “I’m pretty sure there was something in the deal about _no fucking drinking_ ,” he snarled.

Newt scowled right back. “There was also a point about keeping the swearing to a minimum,” he said, surprisingly coherent for just having drunk an entire bottle of whiskey. “Guess we’re both breaking the rules now.”

“No.” Minho shook his head. Like hell was he dealing with this now on top of everything. “Because the deal’s off. You’re out.”

That got the Guide’s attention. He snapped back to focus, eyes wide. “What?”

“You’re out.” He waved the bottle in Newt’s face. “There was a fucking deal, and you broke it. So now the deal’s off. You’re _out_.”

“Like hell.” Newt got to his feet, a little clumsy but otherwise fine. “You _need_ me,” he said. “You can’t function without me.”

“Yeah, well I can’t function _with_ you,” Minho shot back, “not if you’re fucking _drunk._ I can’t use a drunk Guide. You’re _out._ You can sleep here one more night but in the morning I want you gone.”

“You’re not serious.” Newt shook his head. “You need me.”

“I need you sober,” Minho said again. “You’re not sober. So you can fuck off. I’ll find someone else. Apparently we have an abundance of washed-up Guides in this city anyway.”

“This isn’t about the drink.” Newt shook his head, glaring at Minho. Minho could feel the Guide’s anger like a prickling on his skin but he ignored it. “This is because you’re pissed,” Newt went on. “It’s because it’s been days and you haven’t gotten anywhere with the case. You’re pissed and you’re taking it out on me.”

“I don’t need to justify myself to you,” Minho snapped. “You broke our deal. You’re done. Stop fighting it. It’s pathetic.”

Newt’s hands clenched into fists, jaw clenching tight. His chest heaved and Minho could literally _smell_ his anger. “You can’t leave me,” he said. “Try it, I fucking _dare_ you. You’ll come back within a week.”

“I’ll take that dare,” Minho said. He retreated. “In the morning, you’re out.”

He closed the door and pretended not to hear Newt’s muttered “So where am I supposed to go?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well that was fun. How's everyone feeling?


	7. Remember when you hit the brakes too soon?

Thomas looked up when Minho entered the bullpen. “Where’s Newt?” he asked, frowning.

“Gone,” Minho said shortly, sitting down. “Where are we at with the case?”

“Nowhere,” Thomas said. “We have absolutely nothing. Chuck’s lead went nowhere--I checked into it. Janson’s car was reported stolen two days before Rachel Chen was killed, and there are no leads as to who did it or where it is. It completely vanished from the radar until Chuck saw it, and then it promptly did another disappearing act. I had Ben run traffic cameras looking for it but nothing.”

“Dammit,” Minho whispered, dragging a hand over his face. “So we’re back to square one.”

“Yeah,” Thomas said. “What do you mean Newt’s gone?”

“He’s gone,” Minho repeated. “I kicked him out.”

“You what?” Thomas dropped the pen he was holding. “Why?”

Minho sighed and decided to go with the truth. “I found him drunk last night.”

“Damn,” Thomas whispered. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Minho said. “Can we drop it now?”

Thomas nodded, which was a relief. Minho didn’t want to talk about it anymore, not least because every time Newt’s name was mentioned his headache got worse. He swore he could still smell the bastard.

“You know what?” he said abruptly. Maybe it was a stupid call, but he was out of smart ones. “Maybe it’s time we ask the SGA who would know how to find their dropouts.”

Thomas nodded. “And if they would know why someone might want to kill them.”

~

The regional office of the SGA was a large glass office building with more security than the police station. Just looking at it made Minho wary. He could imagine what Newt would say, could almost hear the Guide calling him an idiot.

_Shut up,_ he told his imagined Guide. Newt had fucked up, had thrown away their whole--whatever they had. Their deal. Thrown it all away for a bender. He was gone, and good fucking riddance. Minho ignored the stab of pain in his temple at the thought.

The woman at the desk requested they leave their guns behind, to which Minho almost threatened to leave. But Thomas was already taking out his sidearm and handing it to her, so Minho sighed and followed suit.

“We apologize for the inconvenience,” the woman said with a smile. “We do require everyone leave all weapons here. We have trained Guides maintaining a peaceful atmosphere, but we do try to minimize the chance of violence. Too many students who could be hurt physically or mentally.”

Minho grumbled something that might have been an affirmative. He could see the “peaceful atmosphere” starting to work on Thomas, in the way the tension that had been rising in his partner slowly slipped away. Minho, though, found himself fighting the feeling, and he had the sense that someone was helping him. He put it out of his mind. They had work to do.

They went through the lobby to the elevator, then up to the third floor. The elevator opened to reveal two people standing, apparently waiting for them: a young Latina woman and a middle-aged Latino man.

The woman smiled. “You would be the detectives who called earlier,” she said. “I’m Sentinel Brenda Alvarez, and this is my Guide and husband Jorge Alvarez. We’ll be happy to give you the information you need if you just follow us.”

She turned and set off, Jorge at her shoulder, and after a brief pause Thomas and Minho followed.

Something about Brenda set off something in Minho. It was the same odd, squirmy feeling he’d gotten when he met Aris, the feeling of being watched, examined. He supposed it had something to do with her being a Sentinel. Jorge, though, didn’t give him that reaction. The Guide exuded calm; Minho supposed he was one of the people maintaining the place’s “peaceful atmosphere”. Despite the easy way he carried himself, something in his posture told Minho he was more tense than he let on.

“Right in here,” Brenda said, standing to one side of a door and beckoning them in. “This is my office.”

The office looked exactly like an office in this building should look, which was to say it was the least private room Minho could imagine. A glass door was set in a glass wall, with the opposite wall being one large window. The other two walls were solid, but Minho could hear the conversations coming from them--until Jorge closed the door behind them all and the sound abruptly cut off.

“Despite appearances,” Brenda assured them, “this room is totally and completely soundproofed on all sides. In a place like this it has to be, or everyone would drive themselves crazy trying to listen in on each other. Please, have a seat.”

Minho and Thomas both sat down across from the window; Brenda took a seat behind the desk, with Jorge once again at her side. “So,” the Sentinel asked, “what specifically can I tell you?”

Thomas glanced at Minho, then turned back to Brenda. “You’ve heard about the recent murders,” he said. It wasn’t a question, but Brenda nodded in confirmation. “The only connection the victims had,” Thomas said, “is that they were both empaths.”

Brenda frowned. “Our system flags any crimes in which Guides or Sentinels are victims,” she said.

“Empaths,” Minho corrected. He shifted to rest his elbow on the arm of his chair so he could rub his forehead. “I’m given to understand there’s a difference. Neither victim was licensed at the time of their deaths.”

Brenda’s mouth opened in a look of sudden understanding. “I see,” she said. “Then our system wouldn’t flag it.”

“You don’t keep track of your dropouts?” Thomas asked with a wry smile.

“Unfortunately not,” Brenda said. “We keep their records, but we don’t have the resources to attend to them once they relinquish membership in the SGA.”

Which was a nice way of saying they didn’t care, Minho figured. Newt had pegged them perfectly.

“Are those records publicly available?” Thomas asked.

Brenda shook her head, lips pressed into a thin line. Jorge answered, “No more than the register of licensed Guides is publicly available. We’ve dealt with too many attacks against our kind to give people a road map.”

“So who would have access to those records?” Minho asked. “Anyone who might want to… remove a few dropouts?”

Brenda tensed, and Jorge put a hand on her shoulder. Minho’s neck itched. It felt uncomfortably familiar and he suddenly desperately wished Newt was still there. He shoved the thought aside. Not important. Newt made his choice.

“The SGA would never condone the assault of empaths,” Brenda said stiffly.

“We’re not saying that,” Thomas said smoothly. “We just need to know who has access to the list.”

Brenda pressed her lips together and once again Jorge answered. “Can’t give you that, _hermano_ ,” he said. “Truth is any licensed Guide or Sentinel has access to those lists, and we can’t give you the list of licensed Guides and Sentinels.”

“This is a police investigation,” Minho growled.

“Yes,” Brenda said. “And we represent a minority group which has specific rights, including the right to privacy. _SGA v. Wisconsin._ The SGA has a right to keep the identities of our members secret in the interest of their safety.”

“Well,” Minho said, standing. “This has been a giant waste of time.” His headache was getting worse, and the “peaceful atmosphere” that seemed to have taken Thomas’s fire away hadn’t made a dent in his frustration. “Thomas, let’s go.”

They were almost to the door when Brenda said, “We can give you the list of _former_ Guides and Sentinels, however. One of them could have gotten the information before leaving the SGA.”

~

They’d gotten back to the precinct, list in hand, when Minho’s phone rang.

“Detective Park,” he answered.

“Detective?” It was a woman’s voice, and she was crying. Minho’s headache instantly spiked. “This--my name is Margaret Dalton. You spoke to my son Chuck yesterday, you gave my husband your card.”

“Yes,” Minho said slowly. “Did something happen?”

“It’s Chuck,” she said. “He didn’t make it to school today.”

Minho looked over at Thomas, wide-eyed. “What do you mean?” he asked. “When did you last see him?”

“I saw him off to school,” she said. “Robbie’s not in high school anymore, Chuck walks to school alone. It’s such a good neighborhood, we never thought--but the school called fourth period and said he never showed up, and that’s not like him at all.”

A rock dropped into his stomach. Chuck was missing.

Chuck was an empath, and he was missing.

“Mrs. Dalton,” Minho said, sitting down at his desk and reaching for a pad of paper and a pen. “I need you to tell me _everything_ that happened this morning.”

He waved to Thomas, pulling the phone away from his mouth. “Chuck’s missing,” he hissed. Thomas’s eyes went just as wide as his and he was on his computer before Minho could say anything else. He plugged the USB drive with the list Brenda had given them into his computer. Minho nodded. There was nothing they could do but run the leads they had.

~

“So just to be clear.” Nick rubbed his forehead. “The kid who came in yesterday may or may not be an empath--”

“He is,” Minho said. “I’m sure of it.”

Nick continued like he hadn’t heard. “And he’s definitely missing.”

“Yeah,” Thomas said. “Definitely. The school hasn’t heard from him, his family hasn’t heard from him.”

“Any leads?” Nick asked, sounding both desperate and like he knew what the answer would be.

“We’ve got a K-9 unit tracking him,” Minho said. “Meanwhile we’re trying to figure out if anyone on this list throws up any red flags.”

“No, not the list.” Nick shook his head. “That’s not gonna help you.”

Minho frowned. “Why not?”

Nick sighed. “Chuck’s fourteen. You’re not looking for someone with access to SGA records, you’re looking for someone who can--somehow--sense who’s an empath and who isn’t.”

“Could be both,” Thomas said.

Nick raised his eyebrows.

Thomas sighed. “We don’t have anywhere else to look,” he said. “And we’re running out of time. It’s been five hours since anyone saw him.”

“Fine,” Nick said. “I’ll have Ben and Teresa crunch numbers and run the list. You two, I want pounding pavement. Talk to the neighbors, talk to Chuck’s friends. See if anyone remembers anyone so much as looking at the kid funny. And find out if any other kids are missing while you’re at it. This might be a prank. It might not be related.”

Minho nodded, although he knew as well as the captain did that that was wishful thinking.

~

“God fucking _damn_ it!”

Minho kicked the tire of the car, pounding his hand against the hood. “How hard can it be to find a serial? How does this guy hide so fucking well?”

“Man, calm down,” Thomas said. “You’re not helping anyone by blowing up.”

“We’re not helping anyone _anyway!_ ” he yelled, turning to face his partner. “Four days, two deaths, and now a disappearance and we still have no leads! We have _nothing!_ ”

The only good thing to be said about the day was that Minho hadn’t gone into a zone-out. That was dumb luck, as far as he saw it, because without Newt he wouldn’t have been able to pull himself out of it. He probably would have gotten found out and sent to the SGA for proper training. But he hadn’t had that happen. Instead, he had a headache so bad he could barely see and a kid who he actually liked going missing.

He put his hands on the roof of the car, leaning forward, breathing heavily. “The guy must have seen Chuck,” he said. “He must have recognized him, but then why wait until Chuck had already talked to us to take him?”

“Dude.” Thomas’s hand landed on Minho’s shoulder, and Minho had to work hard not to throw it off and punch him. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re fried. You’re no good to anyone like this. Go home. Go to bed early. I’ll keep you updated.”

Minho shook his head, and Thomas sighed and dropped his hand and walked away. Minho stared at the car, trying to think. It was hard; the longer the quiet stretched out the louder the background noises got, until he was fighting a spike.

Thomas tapped his shoulder. A phone appeared in front of his face. Minho took it on autopilot and held it to his ear. “Detective Park.”

“Minho,” Nick’s weary voice said, “go home. I’ve called in the FBI and a team from the SGA. There’s nothing more you can do and from the sound of it you’re not at your best to begin with. Go home. That’s an order.”

Minho’s shoulders went rigid. “Nick--”

“Don’t ‘Nick’ me,” the captain warned. “Go home.”

His shoulders slumped. “Yes, sir,” he muttered, and hung up. He glared at Thomas. “Low blow, dude. Low fucking blow.”

Thomas clapped him on the shoulder, taking his phone back. “I also called a cab,” he said. “Don’t worry, it’s on me. I don’t trust you behind the wheel.”

That was probably wise.

~

He felt like he was sleepwalking as he went into the lobby of his building. He fished out his key and got the mail from his mailbox, then went into the elevator and hit the button for his floor. As the elevator ascended he rifled through his mail. Bill. Spam. Spam. SGA--

He stopped and checked that one again. Zachary Elijah Newton was the recipient.

“Well, you slippery little fucker,” he muttered. “Let’s see why your old bosses keep mailing you.”

The elevator opened and he stepped out onto his floor and headed to his own apartment. His headache had settled into a dull throb behind his eyes. It made it much easier to convince himself that this was an acceptable thing to do. He hadn’t had headaches like this before Newt came into his life.

He unlocked his door and went in, dropping his keys in the bowl by the door and sitting at the kitchen table. He ripped open the envelope and started reading.

_ Mr. Newton, _

_After careful review of your file we must regretfully inform you that your appeal has been denied. At this time it cannot be shown that you were acting in the interest of your Sentinel…_

The hell? Minho scanned the rest of the letter. More about the appeal, something about bills, denial of renewed SGA membership.

Why was Newt trying to get back into the SGA?

A horrible twisting feeling settled in his stomach. Did the SGA know about him? Had Newt sold him out to get his SGA membership back?

No. Somehow he was sure that wasn't what had happened, that Newt wouldn't do that to him.

He flipped through the rest of the mail, looking for more. There, at the bottom--a letter to Zachary E. Newton from something called Edison Recovery Services. Minho ripped open this one too.

It was a bill. Or rather, a ‘final notice’. For hospital bills totaling $4,000.

Minho wasn’t much good at math, but he was pretty sure three months of $400 a week added up to at least $4,000.

~

It was exactly as easy to find Newt this time as the last one. Hell, he was even in the same bar.

“Well,” Minho said, sitting down across from him. “Didn’t take you long to backslide all the way, did it?”

Newt’s eyes flicked up, then back down to his drink. “Coming back, Sentinel?” he asked mockingly. “I told you you would.”

Minho dropped the envelopes in front of him.

One thing he’d learned quickly about Newt: Newt was never as drunk as he looked. Right now the Guide’s eyes focused quickly, then slowly worked their way up to Minho’s face.

“They’ve been opened,” he said softly.

Minho nodded. “And read. Granted, I’m missing some context, but I think I got the gist.”

Newt traced a finger over the ragged edge of one of the envelopes, not looking at him. His jaw was clenched, shoulders tight. He looked like a man expecting vitriol, or a child expecting a rebuke.

Minho gave him neither. “So let me see if I’ve got this right,” he said. “Years back you got in an accident that killed your Sentinel and left you stranded. Come to find out, the SGA won’t pay your bills, I’m a little fuzzy on the why, so you drift and drink until you find a way to pay. Only something goes wrong, you relapse, you get kicked out. How am I doing?”

Newt swallowed. Minho took that as a yes.

“So explain to me. Why’d the SGA drop their best and brightest?”

Newt took a deep breath, then let it out again. “Because Alby was zoned when he died.”

~

He hadn’t expected Minho to come back, not really. He’d been desperate not to have to leave. But here they were, back at the start, Minho tracking him down in the same crummy bar drinking the same crummy scotch. Only now, Minho was holding all the cards.

“Explain that one to me,” Minho said slowly. “Because I thought it was your job to _stop_ Alby from zoning.”

Ah, there it was. The thing no one understood. Newt took another sip of scotch before answering. “That’s what I’ve been told,” he said. He took another sip and started talking. What the hell. He hadn’t done anything criminal, so the worst Minho could do was walk away.

“Alby heard the cave-in starting,” he said. “He zoned out on the sound. I couldn’t get him out, which was weird, usually he responded to me quickly but he was deep in his own head. By then _I_ could hear it. So I changed tactics. I couldn’t get him out of the zone, but I could get him to move, if I pushed through our bond. I dragged him back toward the cave mouth--and he got crushed. Ripped right out of my hands.”

He swallowed. Talking about this part was still hard. “And then--I kept going. I had no chance of getting him out of there. If he was alive his best chance was for me to get out and get help. Only I only made it a few more feet before the next rockslide threw me down and crushed my leg.”

“Damn.”

Newt didn’t look at Minho, but through their rotten pre-bond he could feel his reaction. Sorrow, pity, sympathetic pain--but there was something missing.

There was no blame.

Tentatively he looked up at Minho and found the Sentinel studying him with an oddly soft expression. “How’d the SGA find out?”

“Autopsy,” he said. “When a Sentinel zones, it triggers a hormonal response. The SGA checks as a matter of course. They found out, and they decided that if he was zoned out it meant I wasn’t doing my job.”

“And you were just trying to keep the both of you alive,” Minho said.

Newt swallowed and nodded.

“One more question.” Minho shifted, scratching the back of his neck. “Are we bonded?”

He looked back down and took another gulp of scotch.

“Oh, hell,” Minho breathed. “That’s why you said I’d come back.”

Newt shook his head. “I didn’t--it’s not like that, okay?” He looked up again, pointing at Minho with the hand holding the glass. “You were zoned. You weren’t responding at all. So I--I did what I would’ve done with Alby, I reached in your head and it shouldn’t have even fucking _worked_ and to answer your question no, we’re not bonded, not quite.”

Minho drummed his fingers on the table. “Explain that one to me.”

He groaned, dropping his glass to the table and raking his hands through his hair. “There are stages to a bond,” he said. “What Alby and I had--” he ignored the twist in his stomach every time he said his old Sentinel’s name “--it was a full bond. Till death do us part type of thing. Us, right now, we’re what’s called pre-bonded. If we starve the pre-bond, it’ll go away and we’ll be back to normal. It was an _accident_ ,” he added desperately. “I didn’t mean to do it, I just panicked.”

~

Pre-bond.

The word sounded odd, but it also made sense. And the idea of starving it threw into sharp relief something Minho had been trying not to think about.

“Do you want it gone?” he asked abruptly.

Newt looked at him, and Minho knew without quite knowing how he knew that Newt _didn’t_ want it gone, not completely anyway. He pressed his advantage.

“Because the way I see it, if you were bonded to a Sentinel the SGA would have to let you back in. Didn’t you say something about them not having enough Sentinels? And if _I_ had a _Guide,_ maybe that Guide could keep me from getting shuffled into the Sentinel unit. Maybe that Guide could keep me grounded.”

The words chilled him and thrilled him all at once. He didn’t want a Guide, he’d never wanted a Guide, but he could handle having Newt. Newt who could keep up with him, who knew him better than anyone, who drove like a city boy and took his coffee with too much sugar and hardly any cream. He’d known him less than a week and maybe it was just the pre-bond talking but Newt had been right. He needed him.

Newt’s mouth opened, then shut. There was something hopeful and desperate and terrified in his eyes. He licked his lips and said, “If we don’t starve it, there’s no going back. No kicking me out because I’m drinking, no--no telling me off or abandoning me or--”

“Chuck’s missing.”

Newt stopped. “He what?” he whispered.

Minho took a breath. “Look. I’m not good at thinking in terms of forever, okay? But right now there’s a kid missing and I can’t think straight enough to find him because I have the headache to end all headaches. We’re calling in an SGA team but--” He took another breath. “I could really use a Guide right now.”

Newt stared, barely breathing, mouth half open.

Minho cleared his throat awkwardly. “So what do you say?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, we're in the home stretch. Only three chapters left and believe me, there's a lot to happen in those three chapters. How's everyone feeling?


	8. Two paper airplanes flying.

The apartment felt warmer this time. It wasn’t about the actual temperature; it was just that this time… this time, he was welcome. It made a difference.

“So how do we do this?” Minho asked. Even with the alcohol in his bloodstream, Newt could feel his Sentinel’s headache.

_His._ Minho really was his, now.

“Depends,” Newt said, lingering in the doorway to stay close to his Sentinel a little longer. “Do you want to just feed it, or do you want to finish it?”

“What’s the difference?” Minho asked.

“Feeding it means we keep going as normal,” Newt said. “Touch when we need to, talk normally. It’ll be a complete bond within a week. Or we can finish it tonight.”

He could feel Minho’s uncertainty, the hesitation, and he opened his mouth to say that they could just feed it but the Sentinel--his Sentinel--cut him off. “Finish it,” he said. “How do we finish it?”

“First of all, I need water.” It was harder than it should be to leave Minho’s side, but he did and went into the kitchen. “The reason your headache isn’t gone yet is because I’m drunk. Alcohol dampens my abilities, including my end of our bond. Water will help me sober up. Then we go to bed.”

Minho instantly stiffened. Even with the alcohol Newt could tell that. He hurried to clarify.

“Not sex,” he said. “That’s a myth. You don’t need sex to create a bond. Sex can trigger a bond, but it’s not necessary.” He got a glass and filled it with water, chugging it down in one go before filling it again. “All we have to do is sleep, keep in contact with each other. The bond will finish overnight.”

He could still feel the hesitation, but he could tell when Minho nodded. “Okay.”

“Okay,” he agreed, turning back to the--to his Sentinel. He crossed the floor to stand beside him, winding his free arm around Minho’s waist and leaning into him. The headache pulsing behind his eyes faded.

“Just so we’re clear,” Minho said, “I still don’t want you drinking.”

“I know,” Newt said. “I won’t.” He had no need to, not if they weren’t fighting the bond.

“Okay,” Minho said. “That’s good. You gonna put on pajamas? I’m not sleeping with you naked.”

Newt laughed aloud. “Yeah, I’ll do that. Brush my teeth and shower too.” He paused. “We need to get my things tomorrow,” he said softly. “I was--at a shelter.”

Minho jerked, almost a flinch. “Why--” he began, then stopped. “What the hell happened? You’ve had jobs, haven’t you?”

Newt sighed. “That four grand?” he asked. “That’s less than half the total bills. Everything I’ve made for the past few years has gone to paying it off.”

“Damn,” Minho whispered. “I didn’t realize…”

Newt shook his head. “Don’t apologize,” he said. “I didn’t tell you.” He disentangled himself from his Sentinel. “I’ll go get ready for bed,” he said.

Minho nodded. “Okay.”

It occurred to Newt as he showered that he still was avoiding looking at Minho. It made it easier, if he didn’t have to remember that Minho wasn’t Alby, that he was replacing Alby.

The thought seized him so violently that he had to duck out of the shower to throw up everything he’d drunk. He was shaking all over, shivering and trembling from cold and disgust.

Alby. He was replacing Alby.

He sank to his knees, wrapping his arms around his stomach, shaking all over. He didn’t realize how loud he’d been until he heard Minho pounding on the door.

“Newt?” his--the Sentinel was yelling. “You okay?”

He cleared his throat, but it hurt. He sent the message through their bond instead. I’m fine, he said, knowing Minho would know he was lying but not caring. He climbed to his feet and rinsed out his mouth before getting back in the shower.

He scrubbed a little harder after that. He couldn’t get the filthy, scummy feeling out from under his skin. The feeling calling him a traitor.

Finally he got out of the shower and dried off and dressed in pajamas, or what he had that passed for them, a pair of sweatpants and the same T-shirt he’d worn all day. He steeled himself and opened the door.

Minho was outside, pacing. He whirled to look at Newt as soon as the door opened, and crossed the distance between them, grabbing Newt’s shoulders.

“What happened?” he asked. “I could smell it. What’s going on?”

Newt shook his head. “It’s nothing,” he said, but now that Minho was touching him he could feel it again, guilt crawling under his skin chasing the relief of having his Sentinel so close.

“It’s not nothing.” Minho frowned. “Do you--not want to do this?”

He opened his mouth to object but it stuck. “No,” he said instead. “I don’t.”

Minho dropped his hands and stepped back, and instantly Newt’s headache spiked again, but he kept talking. “Alby was a lot of things to me and you’re none of them. I’ve known you less than a week and most of that time you’ve spent resenting me. You only reinstated our deal because you pity me for the SGA abandoning me--”

“That’s not it.”

Minho scrubbed a hand over his forehead. “I didn’t ask you to come back because I felt bad for you. The bills just--it made me understand. I didn’t know things were like that for you. I resented you because you seemed like you were just--exploiting my need for a non-Guide. Yeah, I feel bad that your life is kind of shit, but I didn’t come find you because I feel sorry for you.” He took a long breath. “I know I’m never going to be Alby,” he said. “But I’m never going to try be him either. I’m never going to ask you to forget him, or try to replace him. I need you--I need a Guide anyway, and I don’t want anyone but you to be that Guide.” He took another step back. “But if you don’t want a bond I’m not going to force you.”

He was free to leave. Minho wouldn’t force him into anything. Somehow, that rather than anything else made it easier to step forward. He took a deep breath of his own. “I don’t want to forget Alby,” he said slowly.

“I don’t want you to forget him,” Minho said. “If nothing else I’m pretty sure I need everything you learned being bonded to him.”

Newt nodded. “I don’t want to sleep with you either,” he said.

“Attractive though you are, I wasn’t offering,” Minho shot back.

Carefully Newt took the last step to close the distance between them and reached out to put a hand on Minho’s arm. “This is a working relationship,” he said.

“Sentinel and Guide,” Minho said. “Not expecting anything else.”

Newt nodded, thumb rubbing up and down Minho’s arm. Alby would understand. Chuck needed help. Minho needed a Guide. And Newt--Newt needed a Sentinel.

“Let’s go to bed.”

~

Thomas was surprised, to say the least, when Newt arrived back at the station in the morning. “I thought you left,” he said, eyes flicking to Minho. “Something about drinking.”

Newt shrugged. He seemed relaxed today, more so than he had in the few days Thomas had known him. “I’m a recovering alcoholic,” he said easily. “I relapsed. Minho understands that.”

Thomas glanced at Minho for confirmation, because the Minho he knew rarely gave second chances. Minho just nodded.

“Well, you’re coming back to bad news,” he said. “Chuck’s missing, we’re past the twenty-four hour mark, and still no leads.”

“I know,” Newt said simply, dropping his jacket over the back of a chair and sitting down. “And given the rate our killer has been working, we’ll probably find a body soon if we don’t find him now.”

Thomas nodded, dragging a hand over his face. “Trust me, I know.”

“Lighten up, will you?” Minho snapped. “We _haven’t_ found a body yet, and if this guy holds to the pattern we’ll find it right away. So until we’ve got it we’re going to act like there _isn’t_ one. Everyone got that?”

Thomas nodded. So, to his surprise, did Newt.

Something had shifted between the two of them, Thomas decided over the next hour’s work. Something was different. They were in sync somehow; they seemed to know where the other was, there were casual touches and eye contact and unspoken conversations that passed almost too fast for Thomas to notice they’d even happened. He didn’t say anything, but an idea started to form in his mind.

~

“You go on and check in with the parents,” Minho said. “Newt and I will go back to the school.”

It was two hours after they’d gotten in for the day and they hadn’t gotten anywhere, but neither had they found a body, which they could only take to be good news. If the guy stuck to the pattern, they’d find Chuck almost as soon as he died. Which just left one question.

“What’s taking him so long?” Minho asked as he and Newt went out to the car. “The girls were never reported missing. They died too fast.”

He could tell Newt was considering it, and he could tell it was ringing some kind of bell in his head. He kept quiet, hoping Newt would think of whatever it was--but his Guide shook his head.

“Whatever he wants, whatever makes him keep killing--he hasn’t gotten it yet.” Newt’s words were slow and halting, like he wasn’t sure of what he was saying. “Whatever made him kill the girls--Chuck hasn’t done it.”

Minho looked at him over the top of the car. “Are you telling me that if Chuck just gives this guy what he wants we might not have to find a body?”

Newt pressed his lips together. “He wants something from an empath,” he said. “Something that two empaths with more training than Chuck couldn’t give him. Whatever he wants, he’s going to give up soon.”

Minho sighed. “Thought you’d say something like that,” he muttered, opening the car and getting in.

Newt slid into the passenger seat, drumming his fingers on the door handle. “What’s your plan once we get there?”

“Depends,” Minho said, turning on the car. “If the SGA and FBI are on the same path, I plan to offer assistance to them in any way I can. If they’re not, we’re going to trace the path from school back to his house and find out where he got taken from and work from there.”

Newt was quiet a minute, until they were on the road. “By ‘trace the path’ you mean by scent. You’re going to track him by scent.”

“If the SGA is there, they’ll probably have done that already,” Minho said. “If not, then yes, that’s what I want to do.”

Newt was quiet again, and finally Minho looked over at him. “You don’t think I can do it.”

It wasn’t a question, but Newt answered anyway. “We should start at the house instead, if you want to trace him. You won’t be able to identify his scent otherwise.”

“Right,” he muttered, and made a right instead of a left at the next light. “So what are we gonna do when we get there?”

Newt sighed. “We’re going to say that we want to look in Chuck’s room. We’re going to borrow a shirt, maybe a jacket. A pair of shoes if those don’t have enough scent. Then I’m going to walk you through tracking by scent, probably pushing through our bond to keep you from spiking or zoning out. Simple enough.”

It didn’t sound all that simple to Minho, but he nodded anyway.

Newt smiled at him. “Relax,” he said. “I know what I’m doing. I’ll get you through this.”

“Right,” Minho muttered. He made the final turn onto Chuck’s street.

In the seat beside him, Newt tensed. “Stop. Pull over. Now.”

Minho looked at him bemusedly but obeyed, pulling over and putting the hazard lights on. “What? What’s going on?”

“SGA,” Newt muttered. “You planned for them to be at the school, but they’re here instead. They’ll know what you are if they see you.”

Minho’s blood went cold. “What do you mean, they’ll know what I am?”

“Sentinels and empaths can recognize each other,” Newt snapped. He turned to look at Minho with narrowed eyes. “What’s with that tone?”

“I, um.” His mouth was dry. “I sort of went to see them--me and Thomas went to talk to them. We met two of them--Brenda and Jorge Alvarez, a bonded pair…”

He trailed off. Newt was dragging his hands over his face, looking furious and helpless.

“Dammit,” he muttered. “Dammit. Well, they know you’re a Sentinel now, but if they haven’t said anything they probably _don’t_ know you’re unregistered. And if you don’t give them a reason to look too closely at you, they won’t find out. But if they see me, all bets are off.”

Minho looked back down the street toward the house. “So what do we do?” he asked. “Sit on our hands and wait for them to find Chuck?”

Newt dropped his hands and looked up at the ceiling of the car, lips moving silently.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. If they’re at the house they’re already doing what we planned to do. You tell them I’m the one who identified Chuck as an empath. Avoid telling them what I’m doing with you if you can help it. Let me answer any questions. We’ll do what we came here for.”

“You sure?” Minho asked.

Newt nodded. “I’m not letting this kid die if I can help it.”

Minho nodded, started the car, and drove the half block up to Chuck’s house.

It was just his luck that the Sentinel and Guide talking to Chuck’s parents were Brenda and Jorge. They turned to see who had come in, and Brenda’s eyebrows rose.

“Zach,” she said. It took Minho a minute to remember that was Newt’s real first name. “What are _you_ doing here?” Her eyes flicked between them and Minho had the uncomfortable feeling she knew exactly what Newt was doing here.

“It’s Newt now,” the ex-Guide said smoothly. “And I’m here because I’m the one who identified Chuck as an empath. I want to help if I can.”

One eyebrow rose even higher. “How do you propose to do that?” she asked. “Last I checked you weren’t licensed for Guide work anymore.”

“I’m not here as a Guide,” Newt said. “My empathy still works. I still know what I’m looking for.” He looked at Chuck’s mother. “Unless _you_ have a problem with me being here,” he said pointedly. “In which case I’ll leave. Otherwise I’d like to look at your son’s room.”

Mrs. Dalton looked between the Sentinels and Guides standing in her entryway, then nodded. “I’d--I’ll take any help I can get,” she said. “I just want my son back.”

“Thank you,” Newt said with a kind smile, and left the room. He didn’t seem to need directions to Chuck’s room, which was just as well, as Mrs. Dalton didn’t seem entirely ready to stand up for any reason.

“So,” Minho said awkwardly. “You’re the ones who were sent in to help.”

Brenda nodded tightly. Jorge spoke up. “That we were,” he said, resting his hands on Brenda’s shoulders. “SGA asked us to trace the kid by scent and static, see if we could get anywhere.”

_Static?_ Minho wondered, but put it out of his mind. He’d ask Newt later.

“So what are you still doing here?” he asked instead. “Taking your sweet time getting up to Chuck’s room and getting a scent, aren’t you?”

“We only got here a minute ago,” Jorge said, squeezing Brenda’s shoulders warningly. “We were about to head up when you came in.”

Minho gestured to the hallway mockingly. “I’m not stopping you--”

_ Minho! _

The mental yell was so loud he flinched, eyes going wide. He knew Newt’s voice--and he knew the second that voice went silent.

_ Newt! _

His Guide had never taught him to reply, but he knew Newt would hear him. Only there was no answer.

He pushed past the Sentinel and Guide and ran to Chuck’s room, but Newt wasn’t there. He retreated, drawing in deep breaths, looking for his Guide’s scent without meaning to. He headed almost unconsciously to the back door and almost choked. There, stinging his nose, was a scent he knew without being taught it.

Blood.

“Newt!” he yelled, but there was no answer. Of course there was no answer.

Newt was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woo, only two chapters left! How's everyone feeling?


	9. Are we out of the woods yet?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning: There is an onscreen rape in this chapter. It's not explicit at all, but it's there.

“Newt!”

Newt was gone. He’d left the room less than five minutes ago and he’d been taken. Minho could hear, distantly, Brenda and Jorge coming up behind him; but he didn’t wait. He didn’t want to listen to what they had to say. He didn’t want to listen to anyone. It would be too loud. He could feel himself spiraling toward a spike and this time there was no Newt to pull him back from it.

He fumbled his phone out of his pocket and hit the first speed dial.

“Minho?” Thomas asked when he picked up.

“Newt’s gone.” His own voice sounded tinny in his ears, like he was talking underwater. “He’s been taken. Thomas--”

“Breathe, Minho.” He could hear Thomas moving, which was good. “I’m on my way. You’re at the school still?”

“No. Chuck’s house.” Minho shut his eyes, covering them with his free hand, trying to block out the light that was suddenly too bright. “We changed course. Newt’s _gone_.”

“Hey, hey.” Thomas’s voice was soothing. “It’s okay, I’m on my way. I’ll be there in five minutes, okay? Just breathe.”

Minho nodded, then remembered Thomas couldn’t hear him. “Get here,” he said. “I don’t want the next body we find to be Newt’s.”

They still hadn’t found Chuck’s body, he thought as he hung up. It broke pattern for them not to find the last body before the new victim got taken. Of course, it had broken pattern for Chuck to be reported missing in the first place.

He shoved his phone back in his pocket and covered his face with both hands, dragging in deep breaths to center himself. It didn’t help, not really. Newt was gone.

People were talking behind him. He focused on the voices automatically, listening despite their efforts to be quiet. He stepped aside as they approached, and Brenda slipped out onto the porch, crouching down as she scented the air.

If he was a better Sentinel, no one else would be needed. He’d be able to find his own damn Guide.

He headed for the front door. He ignored Chuck’s mom when she asked what had happened. Someone else could tell her. He needed to think.

He could feel their bond still, distantly. Newt’s presence was like he’d wrapped himself in a comfortable well-worn jacket but now it was frayed, like a thin scratchy blanket instead. But it was there. He could feel it if he looked. And he knew, he just knew if he knew how he’d be able to give that feeling a location and a strength and use it to find Newt. No one else would need to be involved, he wouldn’t even need his senses.

He growled under his breath. He was probably deluding himself, making him feel even more helpless than he really was. Fortunately he was saved from that train of thought by the arrival of not one but three police cars, arriving from two different directions. Thomas and Nick emerged from one, the FBI agents assigned to the case from a second, and a K-9 cop with his four-legged partner from the third.

Nick made a beeline for Minho, face set in a grim expression. Minho didn’t have time to wonder why his captain was there before Nick asked, “Newt’s missing?”

Minho nodded. “He went to look at Chuck’s room and disappeared on the way there. There’s blood on the back porch, too.” He was too close to shock to think about how he’d explain knowing that.

“Okay,” Nick said. “We’ve got time, okay? Relax.”

Minho looked sharply at his captain. “My--he’s gone,” he said, voice cracking. “How am I supposed to relax?”

“We haven’t found Chuck’s body yet,” Thomas said. “He might still be alive, and if he’s alive the guy won’t go after Newt yet.”

Minho couldn’t even pretend he was reassured.

~

It was dark, and his head hurt. Those were the first two things he noticed. The next was that he was moving, and suddenly things snapped into clear focus.

He was in a car. In a trunk, by the feeling of it and the lack of light. There was one other person in the car--no, two, but one of them was…

“Oh, no. Chuck.”

The second person in the car was Chuck, and he was crying. He was hurt. Maybe almost dead.

His head hurt too much to analyze the second, unfamiliar presence. Darkness washed over him when he tried.

~

The FBI agents, Billy and Jackson, had set to work constructing a profile of the guy. Their media liaison had gone out to arrange a press conference, updating the community on Chuck and Newt. The K-9 unit and Brenda and Jorge had all left to try to track Newt. Which left Nick and Thomas and Minho to try to get any information they could. In Thomas and Nick’s case, that meant trying to get it from Minho.

No, he hadn’t seen anyone looking sideways at Newt. Unless you counted Gally, but he was well and truly alibied for the disappearance, being on patrol on the other side of town. The SGA might have a few bones to pick with Newt, but Brenda and Jorge had been accounted for when Newt went missing.

Thomas sighed. “We should’ve known he was in the line of fire,” he said.

Minho froze. “He’s not,” he whispered.

Both men looked at him. Minho could feel their gazes but he could also feel ice in his veins as he realized.

“He’s looking for unbonded empaths,” he said slowly, softly. “But Newt isn’t.”

He put a hand over his mouth. Newt was going to die. If this guy couldn’t get what he wanted from him, he was going to die. Minho would be like Newt had, suddenly bereft of the one person who made being what he was bearable.

Put like that, he suddenly knew why the person was doing this to begin with.

“Goddammit,” he whispered. “He told me. Newt fucking _told_ me why he’s doing this, he couldn’t put the dots together but they were all _there_ and I wasn’t listening.”

“What?” Nick asked. “What are you talking about?”

Minho looked up. It was amazing how clear it was now.

“We’re looking for someone who can recognize empaths by sight,” he said distantly. “Someone who wants something he thinks he can get by raping them. Newt told me, days ago. Sentinels and empaths recognize each other--and sex can trigger an involuntary bond.” He took a deep breath. “We’re looking for a Sentinel.”

~

They’d stopped. The jolt was what woke him up again. He opened his eyes, looking around; then closed them quickly when he heard the click of the trunk lock opening.

He wanted to fight. He did. But he didn’t think he could. His hands were tied behind his back, ankles tied together. His head still hurt too much to try to use his powers to defuse whatever was about to happen.

A little boy’s sobbing caught his ears and he had to fight not to turn his head toward the sound. He needed to be seen as asleep, unconscious, weak. He needed time for his head and his powers to recover so he could get out of this.

Tentatively, he reached along his bond to Minho. The act made his head throb before he found Minho’s presence, warm and soothing and a little prickly like sitting in front of a fireplace. The feeling made him relax a little bit, made his headache fade minutely.

_Find me_ , he begged, although he wasn’t even sure if he was strong enough to send the message properly. He didn’t have time to try again, though; arms were sliding under his shoulders and knees and he had to work very hard to hold still and keep his heart rate under control. Whoever had taken him, he needed them to think he was still out. He had to survive.

~

Minho shivered. For just a moment he felt Newt there, felt their bond in its warm and comforting presence. Then it was gone.

The K-9 cop and the Sentinel team had returned, and neither pair looked happy.

“They’re gone,” Brenda said grimly. “The guy loaded Newt into a car and took him to a busy road. I can track a car on a country road for fifty miles, but on a main street there are too many confounding scents.”

“We didn’t even make it that far,” the K-9 cop said, wiping his forehead with his cap. “Soon as they hit a car we were out of our depth. Just tailed the Sentinel here until she gave up.”

“I can’t get anything either,” Jorge added. “Newton’s unconscious.”

“His name is Newt,” Minho said. It came out almost a snarl, and pressure was building in his temples with every minute the other Sentinel and Guide were in the room.

“Newt’s unconscious,” Jorge amended without missing a beat. “He’s not giving off any sense for me to trace.”

“Fuck,” Minho growled, raking his hands through his hair. “What do we do, then?”

“You do your job,” Brenda said flatly. “We try to track the kid, if we can. That’s why we came here.”

Minho opened his mouth to answer back, but Nick had a question.

“Is there a reason a Sentinel wouldn’t get a Guide?” he asked. “I mean one who was registered and trained.”

Brenda shook her head. “We have enough Guides for every Sentinel,” she said. “Now before you get back on your train of accusing the SGA, we’re going to find that boy before his body is on the nightly news.”

They left, and Nick put a hand on Minho’s arm. “We’re going, too,” he said softly. “We’re going back to the precinct. Come on. You’re riding with us.”

~

He was laid down on what felt like a cot. On his back, which was a good sign when he thought about it. The restraints were removed from his wrists by fumbling fingers that trailed up his arms as their owner muttered under his breath too low for Newt to hear. His ankles were untied too, before a cuff snapped around one of them. A clink of metal on metal told Newt that the other end of the cuffs had been clasped around the leg of the cot. Then the man left, dragging the whimpering boy, and Newt finally opened his eyes.

~

“How can we be looking for a Sentinel if no Sentinel would need to target empaths?”

The question might have come from Thomas, but it was the one on everyone’s mind. Minho wished he had an answer.

“Look,” Nick said. “Let’s stop looking at our theories and trying to make them fit the evidence. Go back to the evidence. We know that somehow this guy picks out empaths, mostly disgraced but one untrained. We know that the first murder happened within twenty-four hours of the abduction--”

“What if it didn’t?”

Nick looked over at Thomas, looking bemused at the interruption.

Thomas, thankfully, kept going. He had that tone in his voice that said he was working out what he was going to say as he said it.

“The only victim we know died within twenty-four hours is Beth Childs, because we saw her the day before we found her body. Rachel Chen…”

“Aris would’ve known if Rachel was missing,” Minho said.

“Unless,” Nick said slowly, “she was supposed to be away anyway.”

Before the words had even finished leaving the captain’s mouth, Thomas had picked up the phone and dialed Aris Jones’ residence.

“Here’s what I don’t get,” Nick said to Minho. “Serial offenders don’t escalate from murder to rape and murder, they escalate from _rape_ to rape and murder. If he’s a Sentinel trying to force an empath to bond with him that makes a little bit more sense, but if he’s a Sentinel trying to force an empath to bond with him why didn’t he rape Rachel Chen in the first place?”

Thomas hung up. “Rachel Chen had a show in another state the three days before Aris knew something was wrong. So she left four days before we found her body.”

“It would’ve been hard to find her at the airport,” Minho said slowly.

“Yeah, it would,” Thomas said. “Which means she was probably missing for four days before she vanished.”

Minho scowled. “Four days,” he repeated.

“We’ve been treating Rachel’s death like an opportunistic killing,” Thomas said. “What if it was premeditated?”

“What if it was premeditated by four days?” Minho said.

“What happened four days before Rachel’s body was found?” Nick asked softly.

“Former Assistant Director of the SGA Dr. Janson’s car was stolen,” Thomas answered.

Minho nodded. “I don’t know about you, but I’d _really_ like to know why the good doctor lost his position in the SGA.”

~

The mind in the other room wasn’t unfamiliar. After about an hour of letting his powers come back online, he could not only recognize the mind, but he could put together the words he was muttering under his breath.

_ I should have gone for you from the start. The SGA’s rising star, I should have known it would be you in the end. The boy’s used up already, the girl had a bond, the other one was stubborn and placid and useless. No, no, no, it was always you. I should have known it years ago. I should have known when I trained you that one day you would be my Guide. _

Chuck had left the room. Wherever he was, Newt hoped he was okay. He hoped Chuck was locked away far from him. Now that Janson had fixated on Newt, he wasn’t likely to go looking for Chuck.

Now if only he was sure he could keep Janson from killing _him._

~

This time when they went to the SGA, it was to see Director Paige. And this time, they got through the gates without any drama, thanks to a phone call the director had made before they went out.

Thomas wasn’t any more in the mood for games than Minho was. He slapped down the precious piece of paper that had been their only delay onto Director Paige’s desk.

“We need all your records on former Assistant Director Dr. Janson. Now.”

Director Paige arched one blonde eyebrow. “I’m afraid I can’t give you that,” she said smoothly. “ _SGA v. Wisconsin_ \--”

Thankfully the captain had briefed them on this. Nick had turned out to have a wealth of information on the SGA that he’d never shared. “Only applies if we’re asking for blanket access,” Thomas said. “The precedent you’re looking for is _SGA v. Rhode Island._ The SGA is subject to subpoena about individual members, same as any other non-medical business.”

Director Paige’s lips pressed together. “You’ve done your homework,” she said flatly. She clicked her nails and raised her voice. “George!”

A man arrived who Minho recognized after a moment as another Sentinel, which made Director Paige his Guide. “Get the files on Dr. Janson for these gentlemen,” Paige told him, and George nodded and ducked out again.

“One question before we check on those files,” Minho added. “Janson. Sentinel or Guide?”

Paige arched one eyebrow. “Sentinel. Why is that relevant?”

“I lied, two questions. How long ago did he lose his Guide?”

~

The door creaked as it opened. Newt could feel Janson cringe.

“Wakey, wakey,” the Sentinel crooned as he came in. He ran his fingers up Newt’s foot, over his ankle and up the length of his leg. Newt shuddered, and he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t awake anymore. He opened his eyes.

Janson was smiling, an odd demented thing that made his eyes too bright and his mouth too wide. “So much promise,” he crooned, slipping his hand under Newt’s shirt. “So much power, and the SGA thought one failure was worth losing all of that.”

Newt swallowed back bile and kept his voice level. “Like they thought your age was worth losing their best Sentinel,” he said.

Play along. Make Janson think he was on his side. Do whatever he could to make Janson think a bond was possible. Stay alive.

That was his plan. It was all he had.

_Find me,_ he begged Minho, reaching along the bond as much as he could with his head still aching. _Get me out of here._

~

“Gally and his partner just raided Janson’s last known address,” Nick said over the phone. “He wasn’t there. Neither was Newt or Chuck.”

Minho cursed fluently until he ran out of breath. “Where else can we look?”

Thomas flipped another page of the file. “Wait--here,” he said. “Janson had other property. He rented an office for consulting work.”

“Checked on that already,” Nick said grimly. “He stopped renting it a month ago. Teresa and Ben are running down possible other leads--”

_ Find me. _

Minho’s vision went momentarily white and his hands relaxed on the wheel. Thomas had to grab it to keep them from veering off the road. “Minho!”

_ Get me out of here. _

His vision cleared, and without explaining he hit his right turn signal. It was there now, stretched out between them, a golden rope he could follow straight to Newt.

~

“You’re not going to fight, are you?” Janson asked, sitting down on the edge of the bed, still stroking Newt’s skin under his shirt. “It won’t hurt if you don’t fight.”

He’d spent years without a Sentinel. Janson had every reason to think that hadn’t changed. Newt couldn’t let him find out it had, or he’d be useless and therefore dead--or worse, Janson would kill Minho to force Newt to bond with him instead.

“Why would I fight?” Newt asked, letting himself sound as defeated as he’d felt when he’d first gotten the notice he wasn’t a Guide anymore. “What other options do I have? I can’t be without a Guide forever.”

All the while, he was sending as well as he could down the bond. _Warehouse. I can hear water._

_ Minho, it’s Janson. _

~

Newt’s messages were getting stronger the longer he drove. He was going to do this. He was going to find his Guide.

“He’s okay,” Minho reported. “I can find him.” Eventually he’d have to explain how that was possible, but not yet. Not until Newt was back in his arms and Janson was safely behind bars.

“Nick, send a couple black-and-whites to tail us there,” Thomas said. “In case Janson puts up a fight.”

Minho didn’t think he would. If he was reading Newt right through the bond, Janson would be busy with something else when they arrived.

~

Janson hummed as he pushed Newt’s shirt up. Newt swallowed back bile and lifted his arms to help. If the Sentinel could tell that he was upset, he didn’t show it; he was busy undressing Newt.

_ Find me. Get here. _

If Minho didn’t--if he didn’t, then Janson would realize he had another failure.

~

“Ten minutes out,” Minho said, although he wasn’t at all sure of that.

_ Hold on, Newt. _

~

He had to stall. His heart was going to beat its way out of his chest, Janson was going to know something was off--

He reached out with his senses, wrapping his mind around Janson’s as well as he could. It was like holding a porcupine in his hands, but he tried to get the quills to back down.

Janson was insane. That was the only word for it. Losing the other half of a bond could be traumatic in the best of cases, and Janson had lost his Guide to a lengthy battle with cancer. His control and sanity had probably been deteriorating that whole time, and now--now--

“Just relax,” Janson murmured, undoing the button on Newt’s jeans. “It’ll be easy.”

~

They weren’t going to make it.

Minho slammed his hand against the steering wheel. If they knew _where,_ not just a direction--

It came into view up ahead, an old building once used by the SGA for field training, abandoned two years ago after a series of attacks on the building. A Sentinel would know it intimately, would know how to bypass security.

He grabbed the walkie. “All units, converge on the old SGA Field Test Facility, Northbrook and 35th Street. Repeat, all units, converge on the SGA Field Test Facility.”

They weren’t going to make it.

~

Minho was getting closer every second. Newt could feel it. He’d get here before Janson realized he couldn’t bond with Newt.

He took long breaths through his mouth. He could do this. He could lie still, he could avoid showing his disgust until Minho got here. He’d be fine.

~

Three minutes later Minho pulled into the parking lot and dove out of the car before the engine had finished turning off. He looked around wildly, distantly hearing Thomas getting out of the car as well. There was a much louder sound, at least to his ears.

Newt’s heart was racing.

“Minho, we need probable cause,” Thomas said, loud in Minho’s ears.

“We have it,” he said grimly. “Someone yelled for help.”

_Find me,_ Newt’s voice begged again.

Minho ran. _I’ve found you, Newt. Just hold on a minute more._

~

He was trying very hard not to cry. He couldn’t let Janson see what was happening.

_Chuck,_ he said, hoping the kid could pick up on it, _yell for help as loud as you can. There’s a Sentinel outside, he’ll hear you._

There was a Sentinel inside too, but for the moment at least, he was too focused on Newt to give Chuck a thought.

~

“Hey,” Thomas said. “Did you hear that?”

Minho couldn’t hear anything but Newt. He was looking over the door, but it was locked. He rammed his shoulder into it, but nothing.

“Minho, that was Chuck!”

Chuck. The kid. Right. They never found a body.

Newt was going to be sick.

Minho took a step back, lifted his heel, and slammed it into the door near the knob.

The door swung open.

“Nick, we have probable cause, Chuck is in the place, we’re going in!” That was Thomas. Minho didn’t care.

~

If this kept up Newt was going to cry no matter how hard he tried not to. He felt sick. His heart was racing and stuttering and his breathing was too fast.

Janson didn’t notice.

~

Newt. Newt was in one of these rooms.

Minho shut all his senses down in a way he hadn’t known he could. He was running on adrenaline, their bond telling him where to go and when to kick open another door to get to Newt as quickly as possible. He opened the last door--

“Janson!” he yelled, lifting his sidearm. “Get off him! Now!”

The Sentinel looked over, and his eyes were so wild and raging Minho genuinely worried he’d kill Newt.

~

He had one shot at this.

He’d never been trained for it, not with a Sentinel he wasn’t bonded to. It was a last-ditch measure meant to be used on a Sentinel too far into a spike or zone-out to be brought back. He’d done it for Alby a couple times, when they were first learning each other’s styles; but that was Alby. He wasn’t even sure he could do it to Minho. But he had to try.

He reached out with his mind, wrapped it around Janson’s, and _squeezed._

It was meant to make Janson fall asleep.

Instead, it made him scream.

~

Minho had no idea what had just happened. One second, Janson was looking about ready to kill someone. Then he was screaming, trying to stumble back but forgetting he was still on his knees on the cot.

Newt lifted his feet and kicked and Janson fell backward off the bed. Instantly, seeing the Guide try scramble into the corner at the head of the cot, Minho forgot what he was there for. He crossed the room and took Newt into his arms, grabbing the thin blanket on the cot and wrapping it around him.

“I’m here,” he whispered. “I’m here, it’s okay, I found you.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there we go. One chapter left to wrap up all the loose ends. How's everyone feeling?


	10. Are we in the clear yet? (Good.)

Minho pulled into his parking space at his apartment complex and cut the engine. He was quiet a minute before looking over at the empath in the passenger’s seat. “You ready to go in?”

Newt nodded silently. He was rubbing the fingers and thumb of his right hand together, staring out the windshield blankly.

“Hey.” Minho put a hand on his shoulder tentatively, mildly surprised when Newt didn’t flinch away. “It’s okay, okay? You’re okay.”

“I’m okay,” Newt repeated distantly.

“You’ll be okay,” Minho amended. “Janson’s getting indicted in the morning, Chuck’s home with his parents, you’re here. You’re safe. No one can hurt you here.”

Newt nodded but didn’t say anything.

“Come on,” Minho said, rubbing his shoulder. “Let’s go in, okay?”

“Okay,” Newt said softly.

He didn’t move when Minho got out of the car. The Sentinel ended up having to open the door and give him a hand out. As soon as he was standing, Newt huddled into Minho’s side. Minho couldn’t deny being surprised--he’d expected Newt to reject any contact after what had happened--but he wrapped his arm around his Guide.

Newt mumbled something too low for Minho to hear. “What was that?” he asked gently.

Newt was quiet so long Minho thought he wouldn’t answer. Then he repeated, louder, “You found me.”

Minho smiled and kissed the top of his head before he could stop himself. “Yeah, I did. I’ll always find you.”

“Always,” Newt whispered.

“Always,” Minho agreed. “Let’s go inside, okay?”

“Okay,” Newt whispered.

Honestly, Minho was impressed Newt was doing as well as he was. He’d been totally nonverbal when Minho got him out of the warehouse. Minho didn’t think he’d been even slightly present to the rape kit, let alone the drive home. The fact that he was responding was more than Minho had really expected. In his job, he’d seen a lot of rape survivors--and a few who hadn’t survived. He knew how bad it was.

He kept his arm around Newt’s shoulders as they went inside. “Stairs,” he warned. He didn’t want Newt to zone out again and trip and hurt himself.

But they made it upstairs to the apartment, and Minho sat Newt down at the dining table. “I’m gonna get you some water, okay?” he asked softly. When Newt nodded, he went into the microscopic kitchen and poured Newt a glass. He returned and set the glass in front of Newt, but the Guide didn’t move. Minho sighed, pulling another chair around beside Newt and sitting down.

“Hey,” he said again. “You’re safe now, okay? You’re okay. We’ll be okay.”

Newt nodded numbly but didn’t pick up the glass. Finally Minho sighed again, wrapping his left arm around Newt’s shoulders and picking up the water with his other hand. He held it to the Guide’s lips, and finally Newt drank.

A glass of water later, Newt looked a little more human. “You’re okay,” Minho whispered, kissing his temple. “You’re okay.”

“I’m okay,” Newt whispered, leaning into Minho. Then, “You found me.”

“Of course I found you,” Minho said. “You think I’m going to let you down? Like hell. You’re mine. I’ll find you every damn time.”

Newt nodded. There was a kind of light in his eyes that hadn’t been there when they got home.

“You want to go to bed?” Minho asked softly.

Newt nodded.

Minho nodded too. “You want to sleep alone?” he asked. “You can have the main room, I’ll sleep on the cot--”

“No.”

Minho looked at Newt, frowning. “Then--”

Newt looked up at him for the first time since Minho had found him. “No,” he said again. He looked down, licking his lip. “When--when Janson--I kept praying you’d find me. I kept telling you to find me. I can’t--if you want to help me. You don’t leave. You don’t leave me.”

Minho was quiet a minute, digesting that. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll stay. We’ll share the bed again.”

Newt nodded, swallowing. “Okay,” he whispered.

Minho stood up, pushing his chair in and holding out a hand to help Newt up. Once again, as soon as Newt was on his feet he huddled into Minho’s side.

“You want to shower?” Minho asked softly. “Change clothes? Brush your teeth?”

“No,” Newt muttered. “Yes. Yes.”

“Okay,” Minho said. “We can do that.”

Getting Newt’s teeth cleaned and face washed were the easy parts. Things got complicated when it was time for him to change into pajamas. As soon as his shirt was off he started hyperventilating and sweating, pupils dilating in panic. Minho left, thinking Newt needed to be alone. He hadn’t even closed the door, though, when he heard his Guide sob.

In less than a second he’d opened the door again and had his arms wrapped around Newt. “I know. I know. I don’t leave. I’m sorry, I won’t leave again.”

Newt shuddered, slowly calming down. He’d curled his arms around himself protectively as soon as Minho left, and he didn’t seem to want to remove them.

“You’re okay,” Minho whispered. “I’m here. I’m staying.”

“You’re here,” Newt whispered.

“Yeah, I’m here.” Minho stepped back, rubbing Newt’s arms. “Lift up your arms for me?”

Newt looked at him with eyes so wide the whites were visible.

Minho looked around helplessly until he realized what he was looking for. “Lift up your arms,” he said again. “Please. It’s okay. It’s me.”

Newt shuddered, hesitated, but raised his arms obediently. Minho grabbed the shirt he normally wore to sleep and slid it down over Newt’s torso.

Newt blinked, looking down at himself. Minho’s shirt was comically large on him, draping off his shoulders and hanging halfway down his thighs. He looked up at Minho, eyes wide.

“I know, you’re a Guide, not a Sentinel,” Minho said awkwardly. “But I mean--you being close settles me so I thought--”

Newt hugged him.

Minho jerked in surprise, then wrapped his arms carefully around the smaller man. “So I made the right call?”

Newt nodded, sniffling. Minho rubbed his back. “It’s okay. Cry if you want to.”

The Guide shook his head, stepping back and rubbing his eyes. He looked down at his jeans and swallowed.

“Here.” Minho’s pants wouldn’t fit Newt, but he grabbed the sleep pants Newt had worn the night before. “Just take off the jeans and I’ll help you get into these, okay?”

For a minute he thought Newt had spaced out on him again. Then he whispered, “Okay,” and undid the fly of his jeans and shoved them down. Minho’s shirt still hid him.

Minho smiled, relieved to have gotten a response. “Okay.” He bunched up the legs of the sleep pants in his hands and crouched down. “Step into these, okay?”

Again he thought Newt wouldn’t move, but then a slim hand rested on his shoulder and Newt stepped into the pants. Minho stood, tugging them up over his legs. He tied the drawstring to make sure they wouldn’t fall down. On impulse, he kissed Newt’s forehead. The Guide smiled and closed his eyes.

“Bed,” Minho said. “I gotta shower and get changed but I’ll be back as soon as I can, okay?”

Newt swallowed hard. “Okay,” he whispered.

Minho helped him into bed and pulled the covers up over him. Newt’s eyes were still open and fixed on him as he went into the bathroom.

As promised, he showered and changed into sweatpants and a new T-shirt as fast as he could. He rinsed his mouth out with mouthwash instead of brushing his teeth, uneasy about how long he’d already left Newt alone. When he returned, Newt was still watching the door for his return.

Minho smiled gently, pulling back the covers and sliding into bed. “I’m not leaving,” he said. “I’m right here. I found you. I’m not going anywhere.”

Without a word, Newt scooted closer until he was pressed flush against Minho.

“You sure?” Minho asked, combing a hand through Newt’s hair. He was used to people rejecting any contact after what had happened. But then, he wasn’t used to it happening to bonded Guides. Maybe the rules were different. Or maybe it was just Newt.

“I’m sure,” Newt whispered, finally closing his eyes. “I’m okay.”

~

Minho woke up to an empty bed.

He squinted at the clock until he made out the numbers. 3:13 in the morning. He sighed and looked around, making sure Newt hadn’t just slipped out to use the bathroom and would be back in a minute. When the Guide didn’t appear, Minho reluctantly climbed out of bed and went looking.

Well. His hope had been half right.

Newt was curled up at the base of the wall in the bathroom, knees pulled to his chest and arms wrapped around them, staring blankly at the wall behind the toilet. Minho sat down beside him, not pushing, not daring to touch the Guide. But as soon as he sat down Newt leaned over until his head was on Minho’s shoulder. He took that as permission and wrapped an arm around Newt.

“You want to talk?” he asked softly.

Newt shook his head.

“You want to go back to bed?”

Newt hesitated, licking his lips. “Not yet,” he whispered.

“Okay,” Minho said. “We’ll stay here until you’re ready to go back to bed then.”

Silence stretched between them until Newt finally whispered, “I haven’t--hadn’t been with anyone since Alby.”

“You still haven’t,” Minho said sharply. “That wasn’t--that wasn’t being _with_ someone. That was…” He paused to put the words in order. He wasn’t used to comforting people, not after this. Usually they’d had some kind of crisis counseling before he got there. “That was an attack,” he said. “A violation. An assault. It wasn’t a betrayal. It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t betray Alby.”

Newt was quiet. Then, “I didn’t fight.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Minho said. “I was coming. If you fought, Janson would’ve known it wouldn’t work. He would’ve killed you. And once I got there you did fight. I don’t even know what you did, but it was a hell of a blow. Let Thomas arrest him without a fight.”

“It was supposed to knock him out,” Newt said. “It’s a last resort for when a Sentinel is too deep in a spike to be brought down a normal way. He was just--something about his insanity made it malfunction.”

“Well, whatever it was, it worked,” Minho said. “I’d appreciate if you didn’t do it to me.”

Newt smiled, actually smiled. “If I did it to you it’d be a lot gentler.”

Minho snorted. “Not as comforting as you think,” he said.

Silence stretched out again, and Minho thought Newt might have fallen asleep, but when he looked at the Guide his eyes were still open, still fixed on the wall.

“You remember,” Minho said, “when we met, I told you how I manifested?”

Newt nodded. “You were working deep cover. You were caught and held in isolation for three days.”

“Yeah.” Minho nodded. “Well, not just isolation. The more--mild forms of torture were sort of a constant thing. Temperature too low, noise too high, not enough food. A few times--a few times they got more physical than that.” His voice had gotten clinical and distant, the voice he’d learned so he could talk about what had happened without breaking down. “When I got out of there, I was supposed to have two months’ leave. I didn’t last more than two weeks before I went back.”

“How?” Newt asked. “How did you make yourself go back?”

“I got tired of being on my ass all day,” Minho said. “I decided I was going to get better if it killed me. Not that it was easy,” he acknowledged. “First week back I had panic attacks every day, multiple times a day.”

“How’d you stop?”

“I made a list,” he said. “Everything that made my job worth it. I made the list and I recited it to myself every time I started thinking about what had happened.”

Newt was quiet a minute. Then he said, “My list would be too short. The only thing on it is you.”

Minho’s eyes went wide and startled before he collected himself. “Well then,” he said. “You can use mine. Or you can make a list of why I’m worth it--though I’d expect that one would be short too.”

Newt didn’t answer right away, and Minho thought his joke had been too true. Then Newt started talking, so low Minho had to duck his head closer to hear.

“The way you are with Thomas, how you both know each other so well. The way you stepped up to help Chuck. The look in your eyes when you found me. When you said we didn’t have to bond if I didn’t want to. The way--the way the bond feels, like I’m sitting by a fireplace.”

Minho didn’t have any words for that. He turned his head to kiss the top of Newt’s, running his hands through Newt’s hair.

“I like you,” Newt said abruptly. “I like _you._ And maybe more than that but--I don’t know how much is me and how much is the bond and that scares me. When I bonded with Alby--we’d already fallen in love. But with you…” He trailed off.

“I’m never going to pressure you,” Minho said. “I’m never going to ask you for anything you’re not comfortable giving. But I--I thought I lost you. And I never want to feel that again. I’m here. Whatever you decide, I’m here.”

~

Getting Newt dressed the next morning took the same finagling as the night before. Getting him clean was the hardest part. He needed a shower but didn’t want to take one. In the end, Minho ran him a bath and cleaned him while Newt did his best to pretend he didn’t exist. It was weird, how quickly their boundaries had dissolved, but it seemed to relax Newt to be clean. Minho gave him one of his own button-down shirts to wear over his customary bright tank top, which seemed to help a little more. Newt wasn’t a Sentinel, but it seemed to soothe him having Minho’s scent on him. Or maybe it was something else, the “static” Jorge had mentioned Guides could track. Either way, it worked out, and Minho was glad to feel like he could help his Guide.

The trip to the precinct was easier. Newt kept a hand on Minho’s knee and seemed actually present to the trip, which Minho was counting as a huge step forward.

“Today’ll be a strategy meeting,” he told Newt. “Janson was indicted less than an hour ago, our ADA will want to talk to us, tell us what he needs, what he thinks he can get.”

Newt nodded, not saying anything. He was rubbing the fingers and thumb of his free hand together again. Minho wasn’t sure why, but he wasn’t going to stop him doing anything that made the world more bearable.

“Here we are,” he said, pulling into his normal spot in the precinct parking lot. “You ready?”

“ _I don’t think we can nail him for Beth,_ ” Newt said.

Minho looked at him sharply. “What?”

“That’s what the ADA is saying.” Newt’s voice was distant. “He’s telling Tommy and Nick. I know their minds, I know what they’re hearing.”

Minho frowned, digesting that and looking out at the precinct. “We’ll fix that,” he said, unbuckling his seatbelt. “Let’s go in. Now.”

Newt unbuckled his own seat belt this time, and stepped out without Minho’s help. He was looking at the precinct with barely-focused eyes. Minho wrapped an arm around his waist to help him in and Newt leaned into him without seeming to realize what he was doing.

As soon as the doors opened, Minho’s ears caught up to Newt’s empathy.

“ _You have DNA evidence for Beth. How could you not nail him for Beth?_ ” That was Thomas, and he sounded exactly how Minho felt.

“ _We have DNA evidence that says he had sex with her. His lawyer is claiming it was consensual and that when he last saw her she was alive._ ”

“ _A jury won’t buy that,_ ” Nick said. “ _Not if we can get him on Rachel._ ”

“ _That’s the other bad news._ ” Minho could hear papers shuffling and could almost picture the look of frustration on their ADA Frankie’s face. “ _He’s moving to exclude the car as evidence. Claiming Chuck’s testimony is unreliable._ ”

“That’s bullshit,” Minho announced as he pushed open the door to the conference room. “Chuck was free and clear on the B&E until he came forward to give us that information. How the hell does this guy think we coerced him?”

Frankie looked startled to see them, and shifted uncomfortably when he saw Newt in particular. “I can tell you that that’s their aim, to discredit anything Chuck says. It’ll be a trick to get him on the witness stand at all if he thinks we’re going to ask him about the rapes--”

He stopped, fumbling as he realized Newt was still listening; but the Guide was looking at the papers on the table and didn’t react.

“Anyway,” Frankie said. “Unless we put Newt on the stand, he’s likely to beat everything to do with Beth, and after that he’s likely to get Rachel commuted to man one. Even with the rapes, he’ll be out before he dies.”

“We’re not putting Newt on the stand,” Minho said flatly.

“If we don’t,” Frankie said patiently, “it’s likely Chuck’s testimony will get thrown out.”

“You’re not--”

“Put me on the stand.”

Everyone, even Minho, looked at Newt. The Guide was definitely present to the conversation now, and was watching Brenda with narrowed eyes. He looked back to Frankie and repeated, “Enter me as a witness. If you do, Janson will change his plea to NGRI--not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. I want you to take it.”

Frankie frowned. “If we put you on the stand, we can get him for everything,” he said. “I don’t think pleading him out--”

“You misunderstand,” Newt said. “I’m not being kind.”

Frankie opened his mouth to retort, then closed it. “Then what _are_ you doing?”

“I’m telling you something,” Newt said calmly. Too calmly, Minho thought. The calm voice he himself used when he was screaming inside. Regardless, Newt pulled out a chair at the table and sat down, and Minho sat next to him.

“Janson isn’t the first Sentinel to go off the reservation,” Newt explained. “There was another, almost fifteen years ago. His Guide was killed in a hit-and-run. He tracked the car and killed the driver and all the passengers, anyone he found who smelled like that car. The judge supported the defense’s claim that it was temporary insanity and commuted his sentence from four counts of murder one to four of man one, to be served concurrently.

“Alby and I were asked to evaluate him eight years later, when he was up for parole. He told us he didn’t want it. He told us that getting caught was the best thing he’d ever done for himself.”

No one spoke. Newt swallowed and kept going. “The SGA has done studies of how Sentinels react to various environments, including prison. In prison, Sentinels are king. They’re tribal warriors at the heart of it, and prison is a tribal environment. Sentinels, without even trying, get more respect than the prison guards. I don’t want Janson to have respect. I don’t want him to have anything.” He took a breath and said, “In asylums, a Sentinel is just another patient. That’s what I want--for him to be utterly insignificant. I want you to plead him out. No prison, but life in an institution. Make him buy it. Tell him just how well pedophiles do in prison and put him in a hospital until he dies.”

Frankie looked at Minho. Minho nodded. So, after a moment, did Nick and Thomas. Frankie stood. “I’ll tell the judge we have a new witness.”

“Minho,” Nick said as the group dispersed. “And Newt. My office, please.”

He should’ve known this was coming. As close as he was to a known empath, as far as he’d fallen the moment Newt went missing--Minho didn’t have to ask or even make it to Nick’s office to know what this was about. He knew.

Nick closed the door behind them and gestured to the seats in front of his desk. “Sit down.”

He took the seat behind the desk. When they were all settled, he said, “I got a call from Director Paige of the SGA today. Something about my harboring an undocumented Sentinel.”

Minho opened his mouth to speak, but Nick held up a hand. “I told her there was a six-month grace period between an adult Sentinel’s manifestation and their being legally required to register,” he said, “and that I would make sure that the Sentinel in question was registered before then.”

Minho tried to look like he’d known that all along.

“Minho,” Nick said with a sigh. “You’ve put me in a very uncomfortable position here. I shouldn’t have to hold your hand through obeying the law. That’s your job. And you can’t tell me you didn’t know, because you’re bonded--to a disgraced former Guide, which the director will be less than happy about.”

“How--” Minho stopped. Something made sense now. How the captain had immediately declared Rachel Chen’s murder a serial, how he’d known how to navigate the SGA… “You’re an empath,” he breathed.

Nick smiled thinly. “I’m registered,” he said pointedly. “You’re not. I’d hoped you’d do it yourself.”

“I didn’t--” He stopped, tried again. “I don’t want to be moved to the Sentinel unit.”

“Why would you?” Nick asked. He actually sounded amused, the bastard. “You’re not a Sentinel born and bred, you’re a homicide detective who now has Sentinel abilities. The people in Sentinel units were all teenagers when they manifested. They were trained and groomed to be in Sentinel units. I have no intention of moving you.”

Minho let out a breath. It was a weight off his shoulders, knowing that.

“The issue,” Nick said, “is Newt.”

Newt’s head jerked up. His eyes were wide and without even thinking about it Minho put a hand on his shoulder to help him calm down.

Nick didn’t seem to have noticed. “The SGA won’t like a five-sense Sentinel being in the care of an empath who is no longer a Guide.”

“They can reinstate him then,” Minho said flatly. “They can’t break our bond.”

“That,” Nick said, “is the plan. Tomorrow, you are going to go to their offices. You’re going to present _both_ of you to be registered. You’re going to request, as is your right as a bonded Sentinel, to be remanded to the care of your Guide. The SGA will most likely piss and moan, but they can’t break a bond. They’ll probably lay down conditions, say, a three-month deadline for you to be certified. Don’t mock those conditions to their faces, but they’re unenforceable because again, they can’t break a bond. After that, you’ll be in a press conference. Not sure how yet, it’s still in the works--but it will establish that the two of you are bonded and Newt is a Guide again. It’ll be the best redemption story the SGA’s ever seen, and they sorely need the boost to their reputation. It’ll also make Newt bulletproof because if he dies in any suspicious circumstances we’ll go right for the SGA.”

Minho sat quietly, taking it all in. “You--I--” He faltered, tried again. “Newt’s mine?”

Nick huffed a laugh. “You’re each other’s,” he said. “Don’t screw it up.”

“No, sir,” Minho said with feeling. “Can I--can we go home now?”

“You have some urgent business to attend to, Detective?”

He looked at Newt, who smiled tiredly at him. “No,” he said. “I’m just calling in the day of leave you pulled me off at the start of all this.”

Nick laughed. “Fine, fine,” he said. He nodded and waved a hand in a shooing motion. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

~

It was a good thing Minho had asked to leave, because Newt barely made it into the car before the panic attack hit. Minho was at his side in a second, pushing his head between his knees and rubbing his back.

“It’s okay,” he whispered. “You’re okay, you did great. He’s going away, you don’t have to worry about him anymore.”

Newt sucked in breath after breath until they evened out and he could sit up without his head spinning off his shoulders. “I’m okay,” he repeated.

“You’re okay,” Minho agreed, combing his hair back from his face. “Ready to go home?”

Newt nodded, so Minho buckled him in and closed the door, then went around to the driver’s side and got in. “Let’s go,” he said softly, rubbing a hand through Newt’s hair again. It calmed him as much as it did his Guide, he’d found, and he wished he had an excuse to do it more.

The ride home, at least, was easy. Minho’s senses didn’t spike on him, Newt didn’t panic again. His senses, he realized, hadn’t spiked on him at all since they’d bonded, except for that one moment when Newt had gone missing.

Once again he helped Newt out of the car, although his Guide seemed to be doing better after his panic attack. He walked under his own power up to the apartment building, then into the elevator and down the hall to the door.

The apartment had started to feel like home, Minho realized as he got out his key and unlocked the door. Like more than a place to crash.

He opened the door and guided Newt in, dropping wallet and keys on the stand by the door like he always did. He locked it and then turned, only to find Newt very close to him. Before Minho could process what was happening, the Guide--his Guide--had closed the distance between them and their lips were pressed together.

Minho was pretty sure his brain shorted out. He wasn’t sure if it was the bond or Newt, but kissing Newt was… really, _really_ good. But too soon it was over and Newt was stepping back, swallowing, a look on his face like he was expecting a rejection.

“I just,” he said. Swallowed. “After last night--I just wanted to see what it was like--doing it properly.”

It took Minho a minute to realize he meant the kisses to his head and temple Minho had given him. When he did, he could feel himself blushing and an involuntary smile spread over his face. “How was it?”

Newt was blushing now too. “I, um. Wouldn’t mind doing it again.”

Minho could hear how startled he was to say it, and he didn’t blame him. Three days ago just bonding to Minho had felt like he was betraying Alby. Then again, three days ago Minho had been almost as reluctant.

He swallowed. “I’d like that,” he said.

“Yeah?” Newt was blushing still, shy and tentative as he took a step back toward Minho.

Minho nodded. “I think,” he said, “I’d really, _really_ like that. If you would.”

“I would,” Newt said, and leaned forward to kiss Minho again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's it. That's the end.
> 
> At this point I'm not planning a sequel for this fic, mostly because I have no more plots to carry me another 30,000 words. That may or may not change in the future, but if it does happen, it'll be after the sequel to Rehab is up and running.
> 
> Comments are love.

**Author's Note:**

> I plan to update this every Sunday, but comments feed the muse.
> 
> As promised, a primer:
> 
> Sentinels are warriors with enhanced senses. The characteristics stretch back to tribal times, when they gained their powers from going on "vision quest" type deals. Now they usually manifest their powers in puberty. Sentinels are at risk of sensory spikes, when one or more senses go out of control; or zone-outs, when they focus so hard on one sense that they totally lose the rest of them. Guides are empaths who are assigned to work with Sentinels so they can control their powers. Very powerful Guides may mimic telepathy in the strength of their abilities. Sentinels and Guides, in AUs, are regulated by some kind of government bureau, in this case the Sentinel-Guide Administration, or SGA.
> 
> I think that's everything of importance. Feel free to ask any further questions.


End file.
